In the U.S.

On Dec. 9, 1981, Abu-Jamal was driving a taxi when he saw that police had stopped his brother. He got out of the car to make sure police were not
violating his brother's civil rights.In the altercation that followed, Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed. Witnesses saw a man flee the scene who did not look like Abu-Jamal. But when police arrived, they arrested Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had also been shot....

Leonard Peltier will be 63 years old on September 12, 2007. It's an international day for demanding the immediate, unconditional freedom of this Native American artist, writer, and activist--one of the most widely recognized political prisoners in the world....

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder must have a lot of bruises on his legs or behind. “I kick myself every day,” he told the Congressional Oversight and Reform Committee on March 17 when he testified about the Flint water crisis that occurred under his watch. He repeated this statement when grilled about his claims that he first learned about the lead poisoning of Flint in October 2015. Many believe he probably really knew or should have known about it much earlier....

Thousands of women fighters transformed gender roles within the context of
the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN in
Spanish) during the intense struggle from 1978 to 1990 for national
independence and self-determination, which continues to this day....

1937 was the year of the sit-down strike. Hundreds of
occupations of plants and other workplaces were recorded, and many
“quickies” went unreported. The stay-in strike tactic was used to
win big gains, particularly to gain union recognition, but also to win
grievances on a daily basis....

President Barack Obama’s administration, utilizing the Office of
Foreign Assets Control, announced on March 2 the extension, for another year,
of sanctions that encompass two Zimbabwe-based fertilizer firms.
Zimbabwe’s government-controlled Industrial Development Corporation
(IDCZ) owns them....

As the Zika-carrying mosquito, Aedes aegypti, hits Puerto Rico, new evidence
reinforces the disease’s link to two neural disorders, microcephaly
(small heads) and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Inside the continental United
States, Zika is expected to arrive in April or May....

Power to the five queer and trans* youth arrested on March 24 amidst a
powerful demonstration of many hundreds — largely Black and Brown, LGBTQ youth — outside the North Carolina governor’s mansion after the Legislature there rushed through House Bill 2, one of the most severe
anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker laws in the country....

On the anniversary of the passing of Blake Brockington, a Black trans teen
from Charlotte, N.C., Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina General Assembly moved to attack working people and create dangerous conditions for women, LGBTQ people, Black and Brown people, and any workers who experience discrimination or who struggle to make ends meet....

— Despite positive steps, the U.S. blockade of Cuba continues intact. That’s how Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez characterized the situation after the latest round of revised U.S. measures in a televised press conference at the Havana Libre Hotel on March 17....

The Bernie Sanders campaign has a dual character. On the one hand, it has unearthed and given voice to widespread opposition to Wall Street and massive economic inequality and injustice. On the other hand, Sanders is running in the Democratic Party, which has been controlled for generations, and is controlled now, by the very financial oligarchs the Sanders’ supporters are rebelling against....

On March 15, just days after the assassination of Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, news surfaced that one of her comrades, Nelson García from the Río Chiquito community, had also been executed. Berta and Nelson both belonged to the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH )....

Hillary Clinton’s anti-LGBTQ statement on March 11 showed how the ruling class fabricates “history” out of thin air and lies to suit its own purposes. During Nancy Reagan’s funeral, Clinton praised former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s spouse for “starting a national conversation” about HIV/AIDS....

After nearly four years of a global campaign of boycotts and divestments, including five months of weekly protests in New York, British-Danish security conglomerate G4S said on March 9 that it would sell its Israeli subsidiary “in the next 12 to 24 months.”...

The forced cancellation of the Donald Trump rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago on March 11 was a beautiful display of resilience and resistance led by the most oppressed. These are brave and conscious youth, Black, Latino/a and white, who should be congratulated and saluted for their militant actions. Instead, Trump, other right-wing politicians and some mainstream media called the anti-racist protesters “outside agitators” and “professional disruptors.”...

Today’s Iran Forum in New York City is a historic event because it
involves Iranian leftists with very different views in the U.S. celebrating and
analyzing the Iranian Revolution — a revolutionary upheaval that
dramatically and abruptly changed history....

LGBTQ people continue to be under assault in the U.S. Ruling-class
right-wingers are seeking to divide oppressed people and workers by pushing
“wedge issues” aimed at people of color; women; immigrants;
disabled people; and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* and queer people.
(Trans* is currently used with an asterisk to indicate the spectrum of all the
different sexes and genders of people who do not conform to the either/or of
male/female or masculine/feminine.)...

Over the past few weeks, Michigan residents have read new, damning evidence
exposing Gov. Rick Snyder’s criminal role in the poisoning of Flint. Each day, the media reveal more details of the tens of thousands of emails sent to and from the governor’s office and among various state officials over the water crisis. Many emails became public record through Freedom of Information Act requests. Emails from the governor himself — who enjoys FOIA immunity under Michigan state law — were released after public outcry. But much of their text is redacted....

Donald Trump’s hesitancy and denial of knowing much about the Ku Klux
Klan in response to an endorsement by former neo-Nazi and Grand Wizard David
Duke speaks volumes about the Republican Party’s political character and
its electoral base....

March 2016 will mark 13
YEARS that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been a political
prisoner. Her life is on the line. She has not had a
prison visit with any family member or her in over a
year. Aafia is a victim of the U.S. torture program in
Afghanistan and continuing prison abuse in Federal
prison in Ft. Worth Texas....

Calling all progressives! Defend the Peoples' Church in Brockton! This exceptional church is led by Bishop Filipe Teixeira, who has made the church a center for immigrant rights in Brockton and Massachusetts, used the church as a base to fight for workers rights and to fight against racism wherever it appears, including in the case of the Somerville 5. Bishop T has also used the church to provide serve the people programs including childcare, healthcare and food programs....

At approximately 11:45 p.m. last night (March 2), the general coordinator of COPINH [Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras], Berta Cáceres, was assassinated in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca. At least two individuals broke down the door of the house where Berta was staying for the evening in the Residencial La Líbano, shot and killed her. COPINH is urgently responding to this tragic situation....

Even though the Aegean Sea in winter is cold and rough, conditions for migrants in Turkey are so harsh that over 102,000 of them have crossed the narrow waters from Turkey to the Greek islands since Jan. 1, according to an estimate of the International Organization of Migrants....

Helen Keller is perhaps remembered by most people in the U.S. for one moment in her life, dramatized in the play and movie “The Miracle Worker.” Seven-year-old Helen, without sight or hearing because of an illness at 19 months, stands with arms outstretched as her teacher, Annie Sullivan, pours water over her hands and finger-spells W-A-T-E-R over and over into her palms. As consciousness of the connection between word and substance comes to her, Helen is transformed....

In the video, Williams is seen holding a banner quoting Clinton: “We have to bring them to heel.” It referred to a 1996 speech Hillary Clinton made in New Hampshire during Bill Clinton’s presidential re-election campaign, in which she defended the 1994 crime bill. The bill advocated for tougher policing of gang members. In the speech Hillary Clinton demonized Black youth, calling them “superpredators” and adding, “We have to bring them to heel.” The Clintons’ characterization of Black youth with that racist term served to promote the prison-for-profit industry....

Political pundits, the media, politicians and people in general continue to be shocked that billionaire Donald Trump is still in the running for president.

Even members of the Republican Party say they are stunned that Trump is winning in poll after poll and primary after primary. Republican Lindsey Graham said, “My party has gone batshit crazy.” (AP, Feb. 26)...

A U.S. court of appeals today has vacated the immigration fraud conviction of Palestinian-American activist Rasmea Odeh. Odeh was convicted in 2014 for failing to disclose a 1969 arrest and conviction in an Israeli military court on her U.S. immigration and naturalization documents. Odeh had been subjected to torture, including rape, by Israeli interrogators and forced to sign a false confession...

In the biggest mass action since the 2011 occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol building, over 50,000 people took to the streets and occupied Madison, the state capital, on Feb. 18. Coming from across Wisconsin in buses and car caravans, Latino/a’s flooded the state capital to demand an end to the racist attacks on their communities. The Wisconsin AFL-CIO issued a solidarity message and other labor and community forces lent support....

The news that the Obama administration has finally agreed to a partial truce over Syria with Russia did not bring true relief to those concerned about the Syrian people or about the danger of a wider war. The confrontation between nuclear powers was at least postponed, and it may get worse yet. The anti-war and anti-imperialist movement in the United States better stay on the alert....

Over 40 people were killed by Pentagon F-15E fighter jets in a bombing operation Feb. 19 in Sabratha, Libya, which was said to have targeted an Islamic State group (I.S.) training camp. The air strike, 50 miles west of Tripoli, was aimed at I.S. operative and Tunisian national Noureddine Chouchane, who had been linked to an attack on the Bardo Museum in neighboring Tunisia in March 2015. He was accused of arranging the arrival of I.S. operatives in Libya....

Feb. 22 — Shouts of jubilation, tears of joy and big hugs were the order of the day on Feb. 19 as Albert Woodfox, the last imprisoned member of the Angola 3, walked out of the West Feliciana Parish Jail in southern Louisiana....

On Feb. 24, 1966, a coup was carried out against Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, leader
of Ghana’s independence movement and the chief architect of the
20th-century African revolutionary struggle. He founded the Convention
People’s Party in 1949, which led the former British colony of the Gold
Coast to national independence in 1957....

Using smoke and mirrors in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is seeking
to convince the world that there will be “an eventual drawdown” of U.S. and NATO forces. A closer look at U.S. imperialism’s strategic goals of a “pivot to Asia” reveals that the 15-year war’s goals include obtaining an economic foothold in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders Iran, Pakistan, China, and the rich oil and gas resources of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia....

Participating (as is now required) in the meeting of European Union defense
ministers on Feb. 5 in Amsterdam, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
praised U.S. “plans to substantially increase their military presence in
Europe, by increasing four times the amount they spend on military presence in
Europe, so they can fund more troops in the Eastern part of the Alliance, so
they can finance the prepositioning of heavy equipment, tanks, armored vehicles and other kinds of heavy equipment. And also more exercises and more investments in infrastructure.” In this way, according to Stoltenberg, “EU-NATO cooperation is reinforced.” [nato.int, Feb. 5]...

On Feb. 15, seven anti-fascist political prisoners in Chisinau, the capital of the eastern European country of Moldova, were brutalized in court by armed riot police, while a three-judge panel looked on. The prisoners are leaders of a popular uprising against a pro-West, oligarch-backed regime....

One of the most outrageous and well-publicized lynchings in U.S. history
took place on July 25, 1946, when two African-American couples were brutally
killed by a white mob in Monroe, Ga., near Moore’s Ford Bridge. George W. Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey, along with Roger Malcolm and Dorothy Malcolm, all in their 20s, were employed as sharecroppers on the land of a white man named J. Loy Harrison....

Whereas, in December 2003 the San Francisco Labor Council sent greetings of
solidarity on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution,
“which abolished slavery and ended colonial rule in Haiti — an
earth-shattering development in the struggle for the emancipation of labor all
over the world.”...

In the first week of February, tens of thousands of Haitians, both in
Port-au-Prince, the capital, and other major cities, poured into the streets to
tell President Michel Martelly to get out. They were not going to allow him to
extend his hold on power by a single day past Feb. 7....

A tragic head-on collision of two commuter trains in the German state of
Bavaria that killed 10 people — drivers, conductors and passengers
— on Feb. 9 and injured many more raised issues that reverberate through
Europe and here in the United States....

I am a Black woman, who, like you, was born in Alabama at the dawn of the modern day Civil Rights Movement. My parents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I, like millions of others, suffered through the indignities of Jim Crow, including watching, as an adolescent, my mother being “escorted” out of a white-only public bathroom by the police....

You have probably heard of Elvis Presley and perhaps even heard him sing, “I ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” This was ”the signature song” that propelled him to fame and estimated lifetime earnings of $4.3 billion....

African-American, Puerto Rican, Palestinian and other organizations joined with the attorneys for Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier at a meeting at the Martin Luther King Labor Center here this evening to raise funds for his defense on the 40th anniversary of his imprisonment....

As the war against Syria draws closer to entering its fifth year, peace talks have once again fallen apart, as anticipated. The Western powers, right- wing regional regimes such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and the terrorist-ridden opposition refuse to recognize Syria’s sovereignty in the fight against such reactionary forces as the Islamic State group (I.S.), Al Nusra and the Islamic Front. Those seeking to overthrow the Syrian government call for a ceasefire while they themselves continue to bomb and destroy Syria....

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea achieved another scientific-technological breakthrough on Feb. 7, lofting a space satellite into orbit. It was propelled by a powerful rocket and, predictably, the U.S. government reacted as though sending up a satellite were an act of war....

The Baltimore chapter of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), a radical youth organization, led a militant protest Feb. 6 to combat the meetups led by Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh. He is a racist, sexist, anti-feminist organizer who has written several books detailing his rape of numerous women. His website not only spreads hatred about women, but people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and queer people. (Trans* is used with an asterisk to indicate the spectrum of all the different genders of people who do not conform to the either/or of male/female or masculine/feminine.)...

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which ostensibly eliminated chattel slavery in the antebellum South. However, the Civil War, fought over the secession of the slave-holding states from the Union, was far from resolved. It took another two years for the Confederacy to collapse....

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder isn’t the only criminal who should be punished for lead poisoning Flint’s children. General Motors impoverished the Black majority city of Flint, Mich., by closing nine of the 10 plants it had there. GM owes billions in reparations....

On Feb. 3, General Motors announced its profits for 2015. Even after taxes and interest, the company posted the highest profits in its 108-year history, a whopping $9.7 billion. This announcement follows the news Jan. 28 of Ford’s all-time record 2015 profits of $7.6 billion....

Hollywood’s 2016 all-white Academy Award acting nominations carry on the tradition of excluding, more often than not, Black achievement in films. Hollywood is a reflection of mainstream society’s historical policies and practice of institutional racism, exclusion and elimination....

Years of workers’ struggle against Walmart’s bosses led Jan. 21
to a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Walmart must offer to reinstate
16 fired workers who joined the “Ride for Respect” set of strikes
in 2013. Those strikes culminated in a large protest at the company
headquarters in Arkansas organized by the union-supported group, “OUR
Walmart.”...

In a dramatic turnaround, two of the right-wingers who created a fraudulent
series of videos designed to discredit and ultimately destroy Planned
Parenthood, the largest nonprofit health care provider for poor and working
women in the U.S., were indicted on Jan. 25....

General Motors announced Feb. 3 gargantuan profits for 2015.
The auto giant netted $9.7 billion after what little it pays in taxes.
Organizers in Detroit with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures,
Evictions & Utility Shutoffs say that $4 billion of that sum should
immediately go to help the people of Flint rebuild their water infrastructure
and for medical needs....

Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., a staunch NAACP activist and a close friend of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was killed on Jan. 10, 1966, in a Ku
Klux Klan terrorist raid on his home at Kelley Settlement in Hattiesburg,
Miss....

Cam Newton is the sensational 26-year-old quarterback for
the Carolina Panthers, the team representing the National Football Conference
in the 50th Super Bowl. The opposing team will be the Denver Broncos,
representing the American Football Conference. The annual Super Bowl, which
determines the champion of the National Football League, is the most popular
one-day sports event played in the United States, viewed by hundreds of
millions on a global scale....

The glaringly racist barrage regarding the on-the-field celebrations and cultural norms of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton remind me a lot of the old critiques of ground-breaking Black athletes: Muhammad Ali, Jack Johnson, Jim Brown, Tommy Smith and John Carlos. It reminds me even more of the current critiques of worldwide tennis icon Serena Williams — too Black, too cocky, too confident, too good to be true. It’s too bad that so many in the U.S. still think and operate through a white supremacist assimilationist lens. It’s so obvious, it doesn’t make any sense. To declare that the current debates around Cam Newton’s post-touchdown dancing and on-the-field celebrations have nothing to do with race is an outright lie, a denial of the very fabric that created this country: slavery, racism, genocide....

New Yorkers took to the streets on Jan. 22 and again on Jan. 29 to protest
the complicity of the G4S corporation in Israel’s imprisonment, torture
and oppression of Palestinians, and to call for freedom for imprisoned
Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq. January 29 was al-Qeeq’s 66th day of hunger strike. He is now shackled to a bed in Afula Hospital in critical condition and has been denied access to independent medical care....

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Jan.
23 that the United States is preparing a renewed military campaign in Libya
with its imperialist allies. Dunford’s narrative provides a rationale and
political justification for a permanent imperialist occupation of the region,
thus negating the right of self-determination for the states involved....

February is designated as black history month. it is a reminder that black lives do matter, have always mattered and will continue to matter. it places focus on all persons of african descent throughout the african diaspora, celebrating their survival, against all odds, of brutalities and inhumane acts experienced by them, and also those who have been targets of racial hatred and violence for centuries, and have endured the permanence of racism....

It would be rash to read too much into the caucuses held Feb. 1 in Iowa, so far as predicting the outcome of the next U.S. presidential election. Iowa is not typical of the country. Had those participating in the caucuses moved to the right, that might be dismissed as not representative of the great masses of people concentrated in large cities. The U.S. as a whole is much more multinational, much more people of color than Iowa....

As its two-year anniversary approaches, the Flint Water Scandal keeps growing. In April 2014 Flint dropped the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department as its primary water supplier and started drawing water from the Flint River, a decision made months earlier. The excuse for the switch — that this was cheaper than renewing Flint’s contract with DWSD — has come under fire. DWSD recently released communications from 2013 telling Flint it would actually be cheaper to stay with DWSD!...

More horrors are being exposed daily by the corporate-owned news media regarding the criminal water poisoning of Flint, Mich., residents. Up until now the media have gone along with Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s racist, reactionary program....

The capitalist system — whose main feature is to make profits for the billionaire ruling class at the expense of the rest of humanity — should and must be ABOLISHED, root and branch. Why? Because this system that feeds off the super-exploitation of the labor of the workers and oppressed peoples on a global scale is resulting in unimaginable poverty, suffering and hardships....

The winter storm, driven by extra energy typical of this climate-change era, dropped 1 to 3 feet of snow from Tennessee to Connecticut between Jan. 22 and 24 as it jammed interstate highways, flooded Atlantic beach towns and closed cities along the Eastern Seaboard....

On Sept. 19, 1981, the AFL-CIO, under pressure from the rank and file as well as union locals throughout the country, organized a Solidarity Day march in Washington, D.C., that drew over half a million people. It was the first national demonstration by organized labor in decades, and perhaps the only one since....

Mary Ann Grady Flores, a Catholic Worker movement, anti-drone activist, was taken into custody in the DeWitt, N.Y., Town Court on Jan. 20 to serve a six-month jail sentence for her 2013 nonviolent protest at nearby Hancock Air Force Base in Syracuse....

After a four-day, round-the-clock vigil was held in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse — despite frigid temperatures and driving rain — more than 100 protesters cheered the news that a criminal grand jury had brought a six-count indictment against police officer Robert Olsen in the March 9, 2015, shooting of Anthony Hill. The charges include felony murder, aggravated assault, violating oath of office and making false statements....

Samuel “Sammy” Leamon Younge Jr., a 21-year-old activist from Tuskegee, Ala., was shot and killed at a Standard Oil gas station as he was attempting to use a whites-only restroom in Macon County on Jan. 3, 1966. His racist murder occurred during the time when he was a voter registration volunteer....

The shutout of Black and other actors of color from the Oscars nominations announced on Jan. 14 has intensified a debate about the entrenched racism inside the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences....

">Water You Fighting For? It’s more than a great play on words. It’s a grassroots organization in Flint, Mich., founded by mothers Melissa Mays and Lee Anne Walters, who refused to sit back and watch their children suffer. WYFF has been protesting the toxic Flint water for almost two years....

Several events celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took place throughout Southwest Virginia Jan. 16-18. This area of Appalachia has a long history of people’s resistance against Wall Street barons and bankers, most notably from the United Mine Workers union, but also from many other labor and community organizations. Some highlights of solidarity with Dr. King’s ideas and tactics were practiced during the 1989-1990 UMW strike against the
Pittston Coal Co....

The following is a letter written by Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, who has been in a U.S. prison since 1981. It was read by his daughter Clarisa on his birthday, Jan. 6, and published in Spanish on Jan. 11. ...

With the mid-November ISIS-claimed terrorist attacks in Paris, and even more since the California shootings, there has been a constant stream of reports, official government statements and politicians’ remarks about ISIS and the war against Syria. There have also been reports of French, U.S., Russian and Syrian government air bombing raids on ISIS targets in Syria....

More than 200 people came out here on Jan. 19 to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community in the face of a right-wing, racist attack on their application to build an Islamic community center on the site of an old warehouse....

A series of rolling sickouts for several months by teachers across the Detroit Public Schools system culminated on Monday, Jan. 11, with the closure of virtually every school. The sickouts continued during the rest of the school week, while hundreds of teachers and supporters marched on DPS headquarters in Detroit and at the state Capitol building in Lansing, Mich....

State Constable Clarke Steele shot and killed 12-year-old Ciara Meyer in her home in Penn Township, Pa., on Jan. 11. Steele had come to evict her family from their home because they owed $1,780.85 for three months’ rent....

On Jan. 14, much of the world watched in shock and anger the announcements of the nominations for the upcoming 88th annual Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, which recognized virtually all white acting performances....

A lingering product of the decades-long U.S. war against the Cuban Revolution is visible today in Costa Rica, where nearly 8,000 Cuban migrants wait for permission to cross Central American borders on their trek to the U.S....

Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in 1973, took a beating in 2015. Yet despite all the attacks limiting access to abortion passed by the states, especially in the last five years, the ruling still will stand, on Jan. 22, its 43rd anniversary, as a testament to the struggle for women’s reproductive rights....

A rupture in a 7-inch gas pipe at a well belonging to the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Facility in Los Angeles has been spewing between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds of methane into the atmosphere each hour since Oct. 23. Roughly equivalent to adding the emissions of a half million cars to the environment, the gas leak has raised California’s methane output by 25 percent.

Residents of the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood have suffered headaches, vomiting, heart palpitations, shortness of breath and nosebleeds. Nearly 3,000 have evacuated their homes, and 2,000 more are in the process. Two schools have had to close. California Gov. Jerry Brown, after 11 weeks of inaction, has declared a state of emergency, and the Federal Aviation Administration has taken the unusual step of declaring the area a no-fly zone....

Hundreds of people from more than two dozen groupings, in both Oakland and San Francisco, will respond to the call of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) to come together for 96 hours of direct action over the Martin Luther King Day weekend, Jan. 15 – 18. This weekend’s events will culminate in a Reclaiming King’s Radical Legacy March on Monday, Jan. 18, beginning at 11 a.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza (14th & Broadway), Oakland....

Baltimore police officers shot a 24-year-old African American, Keith Davis Jr., twice — once in the face and once in the arm last June 7. Police had chased Davis into a garage where they fired at him 44 times. After shooting Davis, police proceeded to charge him with robbery....

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the heroic leader of the Civil Rights struggle, whose birthday is honored with a federal holiday on Jan. 18, was put under tremendous pressure to stay silent on the imperialist war against Vietnam. He was told that the only way that the political establishment of his time would pass progressive legislation would be for him not to object to the brutal war against the Vietnamese people. King absolutely refused....

Come to a report back on the three days in December that shook the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC)’s refusal to provide the appropriate and curative treatment available for Mumia and at least 7,000 other Pennsylvania prisoners infected with the hepatitis-C virus. Those dramatic three days, December 18, 22, and 23, marked a turning point in exposing the DOC’s policy of negligence and malevolence in denying available cures for this deadly disease. A new DOC protocol for treating hep-C patients, something that both activists and legislators had been clamoring for, was secretly issued on November 12, 2015. The DOC attorney was now insisting that Mumia’s attorneys agree not to publicize this document. Mumia’s attorneys refused to agree to this attempt at hiding the horrendous truth in this new document....

The Arctic has been warming more rapidly than any other area on Earth. Since it is sparsely populated, with not much capitalist economic activity, not a whole lot of attention has been paid to this aspect of climate change....

Supporters of a Michigan political prisoner, the Rev. Edward Pinkney,
continued their efforts unabated through the holiday season. Behind the walls
of the infamous Marquette Prison, attacks by officials also were unrelenting
against him....

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s
apartheid policies won big victories in 2015, 10 years after BDS was launched
by Palestinian civilian organizations. Now, a vicious campaign is targeting
Palestine supporters at the state and national levels in the U.S. through
“enemies list” laws aimed at BDS advocates....

The spread of human beings to every continent on our planet has been accompanied by great challenges and great innovations. Homo sapiens became the dominant life form around the globe because of our ability not only to adapt to our environment — all species have adapted, evolved or perished — but also to change the environment itself to meet our needs....

Protests were held around the country to demand justice for
Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black child killed by cops in Cleveland, in
response to the long-expected grand jury decision,
finally announced on Dec. 28, not to indict the police officers who killed
him....

Oakland, Calif. — The seventh annual vigil to honor the memory of Oscar Grant was held on Jan. 1 at the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit station, where Grant was killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle. The 22-year-old father was handcuffed and lying face down when Mehserle shot and killed him on Jan. 1, 2009. After the community erupted in protest, Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Los Angeles, where he was tried after winning a motion for change of venue....

College sports are big business. In 2013, football revenues topped $3.4 billion, doubling over the last 10 years. (businessinsider.com, Dec. 17, 2014) This vast amount rivals the revenue of the National Football League at $6 billion and the National Basketball Association at $5 billion. ...

Cargill, an international conglomerate with 155,000 employees in 68 countries, claims that “we help people thrive.” The 190 workers the company fired in December from its Fort Morgan, Colo., meatpacking plant would likely disagree....

Thousands of Haitians protesting in the streets against the patently fraudulent presidential elections held Oct. 25 led the Provisional Electoral Commission to suspend the second round of voting set for Dec. 27....

Police brutality isn’t a new phenomenon inside the U.S. or in any society divided into the haves nots and the haves, the oppressed and the oppressor, workers and bosses. This type of repression comes in many forms, including racial profiling, frame-ups, beatings, torture, mass incarceration and more. But in the current political climate, it has been the killings by the police of young Black and Brown people that have taken center stage — and rightfully so....

The bill in question is an attack on the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and if ratified, sets a dangerous precedent that could impact other collective efforts for social justice....

Veterans For Peace is dismayed by the Army’s decision to charge Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and endangering troops, for which, if convicted, he could potentially face life in prison. We believe that Sgt. Bergdahl should be freed from the Army with an Honorable Discharge....

The following is a Dec. 28 statement from Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, following the announcement that no indictments of the cops responsible for Tamir’s death were handed down by a grand jury in Cleveland....

Police here shot and killed Quintonio LeGreir, 19, a college student home on break from Northern Illinois University, and Bettie Jones, a downstairs neighbor, on Dec. 26. Jones was 55, the mother of five and a community activist in the organization Action Now. Both victims are Black....

The University of Missouri has been a battleground for the struggle against racism, oppression and underrepresentation on college campuses. This came to national and international attention in early November. After a series of racist attacks — including hate speech and vandalism — went unanswered by the school’s administration, a vibrant Black student movement arose to fight against white supremacy at Mizzou....

Across the street from Gracie Mansion, New York Mayor William de Blasio’s home, were hundreds of demonstrators on Dec. 16. Led by the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, speakers exposed politicians for selling out the working class and the oppressed communities in the interests of big real estate developers. This comes at a time when Assemblyperson Sheldon Silver was convicted Nov. 30 for kickbacks to real estate developers, whose main objective is to gentrify working-class and oppressed communities. Activists are mobilizing town hall meetings to decide on a rezoning plan that is best for them, based on the principle of affordable housing for all....

One year ago, U.S. President Barack Obama admitted what the world already knew. In five decades, the genocidal blockade of Cuba had failed to achieve the stated U.S. objective: overturning the Cuban socialist revolution. The Cuban people, their mass organizations and unions, with the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, have held firmly to their principles of solidarity, internationalism and the priority of developing human beings as the goal and purpose of society....

For decades, the United Auto Workers has been unable to organize a single non-union “transplant” — plants of Asian and European auto companies, most of them in the South. The game has now changed. On Dec. 4, the National Labor Relations Board announced that the UAW won the right to represent 164 skilled trades workers who repair and maintain equipment at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. The vote was 108-44 for the union....

Baltimore activists erupted in anger Dec. 16 when they heard that the jury was hung in the case of William Porter, the first of six police officers who are charged in the death of Freddie Gray. The Peoples Power Assembly staged daily protests both early in the morning and in the evenings throughout the trial. The decision to retry Porter and when is still to be determined. The next trial begins in early January....

Women prisoners in the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, Calif., are on hunger strike in solidarity with detained immigrants. In the first such unified prisoner action in the U.S., women in criminal custody are fasting in solidarity with women in immigration custody. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rents space in the Yuba County Jail to incarcerate undocumented immigrants. ...

As the Rev. Edward Pinkney approached the start of his second year in prison, a powerful show of support was displayed in Detroit on Dec. 12 for Michigan’s political prisoner. The Emergency Conference to Save Rev. Pinkney drew over 70 participants from across Michigan and several other states. Longtime supporters of Rev. Pinkney were joined by many who had only recently heard about the jailed Benton Harbor civil rights activist. Many were meeting each other for the first time....

After more than two years of hard-fought struggle, the militant, fighting rank and file of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union — United Steelworkers Local 8751 — have won a historic victory against global giant Veolia/Transdev, one of the most notorious capitalist union busters, and Boston Public School bosses, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and their media mouthpieces....

“Who will take care of them? That is my question.” Tran Thi Hoan posed this on World Human Rights Day, Dec. 10. This computer science professional from Central Vietnam is touring the U.S. with a delegation from the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin. She spoke at a meeting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center 1199....

Around 170 million people globally are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus. Left untreated, HCV causes liver disease and other complications that kill 350,000 to 500,000 people every year....

The Black community of Bayview Hunter’s Point in San Francisco has demonstrated its outrage at the firing-squad execution of 26-year-old Mario Woods, another African-American victim of wanton police terror. Three eyewitness videos show police officers surrounding Woods before he was shot by at least five of them on Dec. 2....

The anti-Trump demonstration in New York City planned for Dec. 20 could not come at a more crucial time, not only for the movement and the workers in the U.S. but also globally. Initiated by the International Action Center, this demonstration is being embraced and endorsed by a growing number of progressive, anti-racist and anti-imperialist groups, including Muslims....

Thousands of people marched in England, Spain and Germany in the last eight days to try to stop their governments from joining the U.S. war against Syria. Despite these protests, both the German and the British parliaments voted to send troops and aircraft to the region to join the bombing campaign....

According to an activist Alabama blog, the Henry County Report, some current and former cops in Dothan, Ala., planted false evidence of drugs and guns on young Black men with no criminal records from 1996 to 2004, resulting in many allegedly unjust convictions. The Dec. 1 blog article also charges District Attorney Doug Valeska, of Alabama’s 20th Judicial District, with covering up this malfeasance and proceeding with prosecutions of innocent people....

The Dec. 3 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., which claimed the lives
of 14 county workers and injured 21 others, occurred less than a week after a
mass shooting Nov. 27 at the Colorado Springs, Colo., Planned Parenthood
facility. There, it was a “lone gunman” (white) who killed three
people and wounded nine others. In San Bernardino, however, the official FBI
narrative says the alleged shooters expressed sympathy with the group known as the Islamic State group (often called ISIS or I.S.). Why did this deadly attack
happen and how can others be prevented?...

On the so-called “Black Friday” shopping day of Nov. 27, 2014, following the failure to charge cops in the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo., 14 Black activists chained themselves together on a Bay Area Rapid Transit platform. They wanted to stop trains from moving at the West Oakland station in response to the police war against Black communities. The 14, a majority of them women, faced criminal charges....

his protest was called by the People’s Power Assemblies, an organization in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to combat the rising national epidemic of police murders, particularly of youth of color....

After midnight on Dec. 6, when the trend was already irreversible, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) publicly announced the results of that day’s parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Of the 167 seats at stake in the legislature, the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) won 99, while the ruling Great Patriotic Pole coalition won only 46 seats. There were 22 seats still in question, whose results would not change the parliamentary majority....

Billionaire realtor Donald Trump has been traveling the country, filling stadiums with bigots and building a dangerous movement around a racist, ultra-right ideology. When he came to Raleigh on Dec. 4, he was likely expecting much of the same....

The following interview was conducted in early December 2015 by IAC Chicago correspondent, Danielle Boachie, with representatives of the Black Students for Revolution (BSFR) at the University of Illinois–Urbana Champaign....

Demonstrations against the police murder of Laquan McDonald continued all week in light of more and more evidence that officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014, with no provocation....

U.S. Federal Court Judge Robert Mariani has ordered a full evidentiary hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal in Scranton, Pa., on Dec. 18 based on a preliminary injunction filed in August seeking medical care to treat the hepatitis C virus he contracted from a blood transfusion in 1981....

Nov. 22 marked one year since the police murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. The video of Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback pulling up to the youngster and gunning him down in less than two seconds has been viewed by horrified people in the U.S. and around the world....

Is he the U.S. envoy to Portugal or the pro-consul of the Empire? Ambassador Robert Sherman, speaking on Portugal’s Radio Renascença a week ago, warned the Portuguese people that the U.S. was “worried about” the new government. He asked if Portugal’s center-left government would stay loyal to NATO and meet the alliance’s growing demands....

A gathering of African leaders and European Union member-states in Malta has proposed a financial package of nearly $4 billion, ostensibly to halt migration from Africa to Europe. European governments say they are willing to send funds to Africa to decrease migration. Such a program would, in effect, turn African presidents and prime ministers into Europe’s gatekeepers....

The secret war using drones operates throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The veterans stated that the program has “fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to [the prison at] Guantánamo Bay.”...

A second terrorist attack in the same week occurred in the United States on Nov. 27, just four days after masked racist terrorists shot at Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis, wounding five African-American men. The victims were just outside the Fourth Precinct, where a continuous protest has been taking place since the killing of Jamar Clark, 24, by Minneapolis cops on Nov. 15....

Despite driving rain and cold, thousands of protesters marched on Friday, Nov. 27, closing off Chicago’s posh Michigan Avenue shops to shopping, and demanding the resignation of the police chief, the state’s attorney and the mayor....

The 46th annual National Day of Mourning organized by the United American Indians of New England, rallied, marched and afterwards ate together in Plymouth, Mass. to debunk the hundreds-year-old racist myth about “Thanksgiving.” According to the organizers, a multinational, multi-generational crowd of 1,200, came from mainly the Northeast. Indigenous peoples performed a sacred ceremony and spoke in their own name on the historical genocidal treatment of Native peoples throughout the Americas since 1492 up until the present, along with ongoing resistance. The speakers were UAINE co-leaders, Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro; Juan Gonzalez; Tiokasin Ghosthorse; Vanessa Inarunikia and elder, Bert Waters, who read a moving greeting from political prisoner Leonard Peltier. See the full speeches of James, Munro and Peltier below. Go to tinyurl.com/hga5975 to view the rally and the march....

Ada Henderson heard about the killing of yet another Black man on Nov. 15 by the Oakland Police Department. She went to the site, where he was killed, to pray for the family, not finding out until two days later that it was her own son, 39-year-old Richard Perkins Jr., who was lying there in a pool of blood....

New York City is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom. Spending on construction increased by 73 percent to $11.9 billion in 2013, and then spiked by 26 percent last year to $36 billion. Most of the spending is on luxury residences in Manhattan, with a big chunk of the rest devoted to Brooklyn, just across the East River. (Bloomberg, April 30)...

In a Nov. 9 interview of Kenia Serrano, president of Cuba’s Institute for Friendship with the Peoples and delegate to Cuba’s National Assembly, Washington, D.C., journalist and radio co-host Netfa Freeman asked Serrano about Assata Shakur
...

Protests were held across the country on and around Black Friday — the day after the so-called Thanksgiving holiday that businesses rely on to boost their retail sales — to demand an end to racist attacks, including police brutality and murders, and the pervasive racist climate on college campuses....

Some 150 people spent the whole day on Nov. 17 protesting the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit held at the Brooklyn Museum. Shouting “Brooklyn is not for sale!” “Once I pay the rent, damn, all my money’s spent!” and “Whose communities? Our community!” these activists made it loud and clear that they will never stop fighting vulture “luxury developers,” who are backed by huge Wall Street banks, which are devastating huge swaths of Brooklyn through gentrification....

Drivers of the Boston School Bus Union, Steelworkers Local 8751, are
continuing their fierce fight against union-busting, corporate giant
Veolia/Transdev. In 2013, Veolia, a French-based company, took over management of Boston school transportation. Operating as its merger partner Transdev, global Veolia then launched a vicious campaign against the union, its members and the communities it serves....

As revolutionary socialists committed to the struggle to getting rid of this rotting capitalist system, we are horrified and saddened at the latest explosion of violence in this country. This time it was at a holiday luncheon of San Bernardino County Health Department workers held in a center for the care of people with disabilities. The attack left 14 dead and even more wounded....

The Turkish regime’s decision to ambush and shoot down a Russian SU-24 bomber on the Syrian-Turkish border north of Latakia has spotlighted the risk of a larger war in Southwest Asia. Boosting this threat is French President François Hollande’s orders to step up the French bombing of Syria. Right behind French imperialism, British Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for a Europe-wide intervention in the region. Both use the Nov. 13 attack in Paris as a pretext for this new aggression, which is ostensibly aimed at the Islamic State group or I.S....

An ad-hoc coalition of anti-war activists, Muslim groups, anti-racist organizations and students have announced a demonstration against Donald Trump and the fascist, one-percent-backed campaign he represents.
...

On Nov. 10, fast food, homecare, childcare, airport and
other low-wage workers from many different sectors walked off the job,
beginning a strike for $15 and the right to form a union. From coast to coast,
large demonstrations of workers took place at fast food restaurants and shut
down traffic in many major cities. All in all, nearly 500 cities saw
demonstrations during the largest day of action to date....

“Shut down Stewart!” shouted protesters on Nov. 21 at the gates of the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. Some 1,400 joined this ninth annual rally and march of the “Expose and Close Stewart” movement, aimed to end the brutal incarceration of undocumented people there....

This year’s commemoration of the National Day of Mourning on Nov. 26 in Plymouth, Mass., will again honor Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, a fighter for the rights of Indigenous and other oppressed peoples. The ailing 71-year-old hero has been unjustly imprisoned for 39 years, and is now in Florida far from his nation, the Turtle Mountain Band in North Dakota....

This Thanksgiving Day there will be prayers and a rally at the White House for Anishinabe-Lakota political prisoner Leonard Peltier. We are asking President Obama to review Peltier’s case for clemency. If the president can pardon a turkey, he can surely look at facts and free Leonard....

Milwaukee police on Nov. 19 viciously attacked and arrested six members and supporters of the Coalition for Justice who were singing songs at Red Arrow Park in tribute to Dontre Hamilton. The park is where Hamilton was shot 14 times and killed instantly by Milwaukee cop Christopher Manney on April 30, 2014....

A week-old protest demanding justice for Jamar Clark, who was slain by Minneapolis police, was attacked by a small group of white supremacists at 10:45 p.m. the night of Nov. 23. The racists approached the occupation at the Fourth Precinct police station as they have done for the past few nights, being disruptive and shouting racial slurs. A group of protesters were marshalling the racists away from the main protest when the white supremacists opened fire and shot five people....

The Moorehead/Lilly 2016 election campaign condemns in the strongest terms the shootings of Black Lives Matter activists at the hands of white supremacists in Minneapolis, Minn., at 10:45 p.m. Nov. 23. This attack happened outside the Fourth Precinct Police Station where a protest was taking place demanding justice for Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old unarmed Black man who was fatally shot in the head by the police on Nov. 15 while he was handcuffed....

At least 30 U.S. campuses held protests on Nov. 18 to respond to the growing number of racist attacks, which are particularly targeting Black students and the Black Lives Matter movement. These actions were organized by the newly formed Black Liberation Collective, which created #studentblackoutday. Among the campuses that held these protests were Tufts, the University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford, Yale and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst....

Throughout two weeks of exchanges, from Nov. 3-17, the Cuban representatives thanked the solidarity movement for its tireless work to win the freedom of the Cuban 5 — the anti-terrorist Cuban State Security agents unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. in 1998. Last Dec. 17, the final three men returned to Cuba, part of the agreement to renew formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been broken by the U.S. in 1961....

The South African government is facing three serious economic issues. Parliamentary workers have been on strike for higher wages since Nov. 9, preventing routine legislative work. The current drought, which is likely to cut agricultural production, has caused periodic power shortages and outages, cutting revenues to the state-owned utility. In addition, President Obama’s administration is demanding changes in Pretoria’s trade policy that endanger the country’s sovereignty....

An Alabama lesbian mother has been denied joint custody or any visitation rights as the adoptive parent of three children she has co-parented from their birth. Assisted by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, she is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court....

More than 200 people marched down Church Street to City Hall in Burlington,
Vt., on Nov. 5 to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, which had recently left racist
threats on the doors of two Black workers. The march was organized by Local 203 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) and joined a speak-out action organized by Rights & Democracy. Members of UE Locals 255 and 267 also participated, along with other community organizations. ...

The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) of Haiti announced the results of
the Oct. 25 presidential elections on Nov. 5. The most significant figure
reported was the level of participation: only 26 percent of registered voters
went to the polls....

Many young people in Paris were innocent victims of the Nov. 13 attack, but that doesn’t mean that the French imperialist state is innocent. While the 1789 French Revolution raised the idealistic slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity, French imperialism, which developed from that bourgeois revolution, has a bloody history across the world. The actions of the French ruling class have created many enemies, but it is the ordinary people, not the elites, who pay the price....

The news from France is grim. The immediate response of the French government to the terrible attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, which killed 129 people and wounded hundreds more, was to send planes to bomb Raqqa in Syria, a city of 200,000 people....

The series of attacks in Paris claimed by ISIS have riveted world attention. But the most urgent question the working class faces is: “Will the imperialist camp use the attacks as a pretext for wider war?” Using as cover the great sympathy for the hundreds of innocent people who were shot and the 129 who died, the Western imperialist governments may put tens of thousands of other lives at risk....

Just counting recent catastrophes, The International Action Center mourns the tragic loss of 30 people killed by U.S. airstrikes on a charity hospital in Afghanistan; the 224 passengers and crew lost on a Russian plane that exploded over Egypt; the 102 lives cut short by an attack on a Peace Rally in Ankara, Turkey; the 34 killed in Beirut; the many, many families blasted by U.S. drone attacks on wedding parties across West Asia and Africa, and the thousands who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean as they flee war and the loss of lives and homes....

On Jan. 1, 1959, a very important event took place in Cuba: the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. From that moment on many revolutionary measures were taken by the new government to better the economic and social life of the people who had suffered many years of oppression, discrimination and exploitation....

On Oct. 27, for the 24th time, the Republic of Cuba presented a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly calling for the United States to end its economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba. In an unambiguous vote, U.N. member countries delivered a stunning rebuke to U.S. imperialism: 191 voted to end the blockade. Only the U.S. and Israel voted to maintain it. It is noteworthy that Israel cited its “special relationship” with the U.S. to excuse its vote....

Just a month after the Pentagon admitted that its $500 million program to arm and train “Arab opposition forces” in Syria has failed, with only four or five so-called fighters trained, the Obama administration announced that some 50 U.S. Special Forces “advisers” are being sent to Syria....

Members of the Electrical Workers Local 150, North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, who work at Caswell Developmental Center, held a rally at Kinston City Hall, joining with over 500 other such actions held nationwide on Nov. 10. The action called for wages of at least $15 per hour, union rights and the recognition that “Black Workers’ Lives Matter.”...

A wave of strikes and protests by low-wage workers fighting for a $15 minimum hourly wage and a union swept the U.S. on Nov. 10, and made this the largest day of action ever as this movement enters its third year. From Boston to Los Angeles; Seattle to Chicago; New York to Durham, N.C.; and Philadelphia to Atlanta, nearly every major city saw strikes at fast food restaurants during the work day and larger demonstrations in the evening. In total, some 500 cities counted strikes and other actions throughout the day....

Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers.
"Thanksgiving Day" is a reminder of the genocide of millions of
Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault
on Native culture. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor
Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive
today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well
as a protest of the racism and oppression that Native Americans
continue to experience....

A little over 100 miles west of Ferguson, Mo., the Black athletes of University of Missouri’s football team, with support from their white teammates, have sent shockwaves across the U.S. as they have shown the power of united action against racism. Inspired by the strength of a movement that developed rapidly on campus led by Black students, the athletes struck a powerful blow. This blow defeated a university administration that failed to act to stop white supremacist violence against students of color, athletes of color, students and staff....

Students’ anger and power, organized under the leadership of the most oppressed, not only can make demands and fight for them, but can win. A victory against racism was won today when University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe resigned after weeks of students’ demands that he step down....

If Bernie Sanders loses the Democratic Party nomination, does socialism also lose? A recent reading of Fidel Castro’s speeches from the late 1980s defending socialism cast a spotlight on the differences between building a real socialist society, in Cuba, and “socialism” as it is discussed in the context of Sanders’ election campaign....

The racist, neofascist Ku Klux Klan hit the headlines on Nov. 5 when a group alleging to be Anonymous hacker-activists released a list of KKK members, naming prominent U.S. politicians, including four U.S. senators and five big-city mayors....

The European Parliament, a body that is directly elected by the people of all 28 European Union member states and is more reflective of their opinions than many governments, voted on Oct. 29 that each EU country should “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender.” (theguardian.com, Oct. 29)...

Activist organizations in New York City have called for “A People’s Response to the G20 Summit,” meeting in Istabul, Turkey, to take place at CNN headquarters at 59 Street and Columbus Circle on 4 p.m. on Nov. 15. The following are excerpts from a release sent out by the organizers:

Congress is expected to vote on Oct. 29 on a federal budget “compromise” between Republican congressional leaders and the Obama administration. The budget is expected to pass quickly and avoid a repeat of the 2013 government shutdown, when hundreds of thousands of federal employees were laid off without pay and vital government programs were suspended. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that without this deal the debt ceiling limit would be reached by Nov. 3....

Workers at the two Brooklyn, N.Y., warehouses of B&H, the largest non-chain photo/video equipment store in the U.S., voted overwhelmingly today for union representation with the United Steelworkers in a National Labor Relations Board election. The vote comes on the heels of a weeks-long anti-union campaign waged by B&H management, with workers alleging daily threats, harassment and intimidation in the workplace....

China is the most populous country in the world, with 1.3 billion people. In little more than a generation, its rapid industrial development has made it the world’s second-largest economy. Over the past three decades, this has made it possible to lift 500 million Chinese out of extreme poverty....

From Oct. 27 to Oct. 29, a group of anti-racist activists from the United States came to the Islamic Republic of Iran for a conference on police brutality and racism. The conference was launched at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic’s broadcasting media corporation and hosted by famous Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh. After the first day, the conference continued at the Eteghlal Hotel, which was the Tehran Hilton before being nationalized after Iran’s 1979 revolution....

The ongoing racist war against Black and Brown people, especially youth, continues to take center stage across the U.S. Even the upcoming presidential campaign cannot escape the justified widespread anger of young people who are the main targets of police terror....

Tremors anticipating another earthquake are sending shivers through the capitalist markets. Recent articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Report and other major corporate media are warning of an impending crash....

Early on the morning of Oct. 18, Corey Jones was sitting in his broken-down SUV on the roadside of an I-95 exit ramp, waiting for a tow truck to arrive. Jones, 31 years old and African American, was driving home from a gig as a drummer with his band, when his vehicle broke down in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. At 2:52 a.m., Jones spoke to his brother by cell phone. By 3:15 a.m., he was dead, felled by three police bullets. ...

Classified U.S. Department of Defense documents were released on Oct. 15 by an “extremely principled and brave whistleblower” in the U.S. war apparatus. The secret papers highlighted the death and destruction from widespread U.S. use of remotely piloted drone planes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. (The Guardian)...

There is no end in sight to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history. Despite past promises to end the war and bring all the troops home and later promises of a substantial drawdown, President Barack Obama announced on Oct. 15 that the present level of 9,800 U.S. troops would remain for a year. He also confirmed plans to pass the occupation on to the next administration, with at least 5,000 official U.S. troops still in place....

The large rallies and recent gains in the polls following the debate for
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed
“socialist,” have many workers wondering what
“socialism” is. Many more are confused because his ideas do not
seem fundamentally different from those of others in the Democratic Party....

The Boston school bus drivers’ union, United Steelworkers Local 8751,
is fighting on many fronts simultaneously. The union has a backlog of 700
grievances it is trying to settle with the notoriously anti-union Transdev, is
also trying to win a just contract, has day-to-day issues with route scheduling
caused by mismanagement and the illegal use of GPS tracking, and has been in a relentless two-year battle to win reinstatement for four wrongfully fired
elected union officials....

In the early 1990s he was “most wanted.” The Attorney General at that time called it the “biggest search operation of the German Federal Republic’s police services in the postwar period.” Rainer Rupp, under the code name “Topaz,” had delivered highly sensitive information from NATO headquarters in Brussels to the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (HVA) of the German Democratic Republic. Rupp was arrested in 1993 and sentenced by the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) in Dusseldorf to 12 years’ imprisonment. He was released in the year 2000. The superspy, who turned 70 on Sept. 21, gave the following interview to Karlen Vesper of the newspaper Neues Deutschland....

Organizers reported that 250,000 people marched in Berlin on Oct. 10 to protest the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and its Canadian equivalent, CETA [the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement]. Like the Trans-Pacific Pact before the U.S. Congress, both are to be shoved through Parliament in Germany with little discussion of their contents. The vote is to follow years of top-secret sessions involving big business experts and lobbyists. The TTIP is expected to cost jobs, reduce the already inadequate environmental protections and increase austerity for workers....

Despite another promise to cease its fire and withdraw heavy weapons from the front line, the Ukrainian military has intensified its attacks on the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the Donbass region. The Kiev regime’s army committed 22 violations of the ceasefire on the Oct. 10-11 weekend alone, killing both civilians and soldiers....

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been very sick with active symptoms of the hepatitis C virus going back more than six months. At that time he nearly went into a diabetic coma and continues to suffer with a very painful skin condition and anemia. But the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is refusing to give him immediate treatment for hep C, and a federal magistrate judge has refused to order an injunction requested by Mumiaâ€™s legal team to make the prison system supply such treatment. (Be sure to read the Health Care petition posted here for more background on this struggle, and please sign it.)...

Washington and the European Union countries have spent more than four years in an orchestrated effort of “regime change” in Syria. Now they howl in protest because on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria against forces trying to overthrow Syria’s government....

Undeterred by rain, New Yorkers came out to protest a speech by Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko on the campus of Columbia University on Sept. 29.
They loudly chanted: “U.S. out of Ukraine! Fascists off the
campus!”...

The United States, like other advanced capitalist countries such as Canada,
Australia and those in Europe, does not tell the truth about a glaring economic
fact: Millions of workers can’t find work....

The past month has brought home the stark reality of how capitalism creates
both immigration crises and anti-immigrant racism. Whether it’s
imperialist wars, the turbulent fluctuations of capitalist overproduction, the
fascist mobilizations in Greece or the anti-immigrant bigotry of Donald Trump,
capitalism is a heartless system....

Following the workers’ rejection of the tentative agreement last week, the United Auto Workers gave notice to Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles on Oct. 6 of a strike deadline if a new tentative agreement was not agreed to by midnight on Oct. 7. Union locals began strike preparations — mounting signs on sticks, posting picket assignments, even calling for mass picketing at one local....

A dynamic Black Lives Matter contingent of queer and trans* people of color, advancing behind the banner “No Pride for some of us without liberation for all of us,” disrupted the North Carolina Pride parade on Sept. 26. The action, carried out in Durham, was organized by groups from here and Greensboro. (Trans* indicates the spectrum of all the different genders of people who do not conform to the either/or of male/female.)...

Captured by a cell phone video uploaded to YouTube, four police officers, guns drawn, are seen approaching McDole in his wheelchair when a single shot is fired. It is not clear from the video just who fired the shot, but someone in the background can clearly be heard saying: “They shot him in the stomach. He’s bleeding.”...

Imagine an international gathering at the United Nations reporting after 15 years of meetings that it had achieved none of its goals — especially its number one goal of ending extreme poverty and hunger by this year. This happened at the Sept. 25-27 U.N. Sustainable Development Summit, which followed up on the U.N. Millennium Summit held in 2000....

Haitian President Michelle Martelly liked running the country without a parliament. He could do whatever tickled his fancy. But when his term approached its end — constitutionally, he only gets one — he had to organize parliamentary elections....

For more than two years, the Boston School Bus Drivers, Steelworkers Local 8751, has been in a fierce battle against union-busting, environment-polluting, pri­vatizing corporate giant Veolia/Transdev....

U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement departments recently announced that the Black Lives Matter movement was under surveillance for possible “terrorist” activity coinciding with the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks....

At a time when the U.S. capitalist political establishment is in crisis, how comforting it must have been for virtually all the warring camps to come together in effusive praise for Pope Francis and his talk to the U.N. conference on Millennium Development Goals....

Ahmed Mohamed is a ninth-grader of Sudanese descent who attended MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. When he brought a digital clock he had made to his classroom on Sept. 14, police interrogated him, arrested him, took him away in handcuffs and fingerprinted him. The school administration suspended him for three days....

Lumpkin, Ga. — On Sept. 3 at about 10:30 p.m., Corrections Corporation of America management deployed their Special Operations Response Team to brutally suppress hunger strikes, work stoppages and other forms of resistance organized by undocumented people who are currently detained at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga....

Five people have been killed by ferocious wildfires sweeping through California, including a disabled woman burned to death when she could not escape her home on Sept. 12. More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed as of Sept. 20, with thousands more still threatened. More than 23,000 people have fled their homes. Other western states, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho and particularly Alaska, have seen a huge spike in wildfires this year....

In New York City, on Sept. 11, 2015, at All Souls Unitarian Church in
Manhattan, an “Urgent: 911 Report to the Movement on Mumia” meeting was held due to the fact that political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s physical condition has reached crisis proportions. He is in need of urgent medical care. Currently, Mumia’s life is in the most danger since the 1990s. His health is failing due to medical neglect by the prison system....

Venezuela has offered asylum to 20,000 Syrian refugees. President Nicolás Maduro, head of the revolutionary Bolivarian government, made the announcement on Sept 7. Nearly 11 million Syrians — almost half of the population — have been displaced by war: 6.5 million internally, while 4.1 million have fled the country. (CNN, Sept. 11)...

Since the rebellion in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, Black people throughout the United States have been grappling with a number of critical questions, such as why are Black people being hunted and killed every 28 hours or more by various operatives of the law? Why don’t Black people seem to matter to this society? And what can and must we do to end these attacks and liberate ourselves? There are concrete answers to these questions. Answers that are firmly grounded in the capitalist dynamics that structure the brutal European settler-colonial project we live in and how Afrikan people have historically been positioned within it....

Tensions on the Korean peninsula escalated in August as the U.S. carried out massive “war games” aimed at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north. At the same time, the U.S. media said little about the 30,000 U.S. and 50,000 south Korean troops that were menacing the DPRK....

The U.S. government issued its monthly jobs report on Sept. 4. Although only 173,000 new jobs were added — fewer than expected — the Obama administration immediately heralded the new unemployment figure of 5.1 percent, which they claim is the lowest since 2007....

An escalating ground war is taking place for control of Yemen, the most underdeveloped state in the Middle East. Reports claim that United Arab Emirates Special Forces have been on the ground in the country fighting against the Shiite-led Ansurallah Movement, also called Houthis. ...

A Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, was jailed on Sept. 3 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized these marriages in June. On Aug. 31, the high court denied Davis’ argument that her Apostolic Christian faith gave her grounds to refuse the licenses on the basis of “freedom of religion.”...

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA) outlines the agreement between Iran and the countries of
5+1. The 5+1 is dominated by the United States and its European allies
(Britain, France, and Germany), which are Iran’s main adversaries. As JCPOA is being reviewed for approval
or rejection by the United States House and Senate, we the undersigned state
and demand the following:...

Yet another gruesome discovery has been made: 71 dead migrants inside an
abandoned truck in Austria, between Budapest and Vienna, where thousands are
seeking refuge. These deaths are in addition to approximately 100 others who
died recently after their vessel capsized en route to Europe....

he agreement was the product of negotiations between the Iranian government
and what are called the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council plus Germany. Four of the six are imperialist
countries that have fought major wars among themselves to recarve the world:
the U.S., Britain, France and Germany....

We call on the government of the Republic of Moldova to immediately release the seven left-wing political activists arrested at the Prosecutor General's Office in Chisinau on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015. They were detained during a peaceful protest of several hundred people, calling for the arrest of Moldovan oligarch and political kingmaker Vladimir Plahotniuc and the resignation of Prosecutor General Corneliu Gurin....

U.S. wars, starvation sanctions and planned destabilization are the overwhelming cause of the surge of hundreds of thousands of war refugees flooding across European borders and across the Mediterranean Sea. The major European-NATO powers collaborated with U.S. imperialism in each war....

There have been reports in the U.S. corporate media about the conflict on the border area between Colombia and Venezuela that distort the events there and omit the history of this conflict as well as the disruptive and subversive role of U.S. imperialism in the region. The following is a letter to Workers World from someone who lived in Colombia for many years that clarifies much of this....

The International Action Center reprints here a speech by Palestinian activist, Rasmea Odeh, originally circulated by the Fight Back News Service. Odeh spoke to the historic Aug. 29 march in Chicago for community control of the police. Fight Back! editors have urged all their readers to go to Cincinnati, Ohio, on Oct. 14, when arguments on the appeal of her unjust conviction are to be heard in federal court....

The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition (PHSSC) held a press conference Sept. 1 to announce that a historic agreement had been reached in the Ashker v. Brown (Gov. Jerry Brown of California) federal class action suit, representing California prisoners, where the state of California has agreed to end long-term solitary confinement, among other concessions....

It has been a decade since the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were dislocated due to the federal government’s failure to protect their communities and rebuild them after Hurricane Katrina....

A lot of pride and fightback energy was on display at the “Triennial Convention of Pride at Work, AFL-CIO,” in Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 26-28. Pride at Work is the official lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer constituency group of the AFL-CIO, created in 1994 as part of a grassroots activist upsurge of the LGBTQ working class....

Since the 18-month season of bourgeois national elections in the United States has already started, it’s not surprising that an agreement negotiated between the Iranian government and the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany — has become a big political issue....

On Aug. 8, General Motors do Brasil, which has four plants in the country, announced there would be 798 workers permanently laid off at its São José dos Campos plant. There was no advance notice; the layoffs began immediately for the first 300 workers. In less than 24 hours, the Metalworkers Union of São José dos Campos launched a strike to save the workers’ jobs.

The Syrian American Forum mobilized people to gather in Copley Square in Boston to call on the Obama administration to help end the ongoing war in Syria. A group of Syrians and their supporters demonstrated on Aug. 29 outside of the Boston Public Library to demand peace for Syria....

During the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the South, activists like Jimmy Lee Jackson, Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, the Rev. James Reeb and others lost their lives to KKK violence. But the reaction to one earlier lynching, along with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, helped to spark this movement. It was the brutal lynching of 14-year-old African American Emmett Till, who 60 years ago on Aug. 28 lost his precious life in Money, Miss...

Join the International Working Women's Day Coalition for a speak-out to link this historic occasion with today's struggles impacting women here and worldwide. What became a massive women's movement began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. At the first national women's rights convention in 1850, Sojourner Truth, an African-American warrior against slavery and for women's rights, inflamed the crowd when she exposed the racist abuse, exploitation and "Invisibleness" of women of African descent both in the women's movement and across the country. Her famous speech 'Ain't I a Woman' echoed those sentiments....

It’s been a long, two-and-a-half-year fight to free Carlos Riley Jr., from Durham County jails in North Carolina. However, on Aug. 14, after weeks of family members and supporters packing the county courthouse, a big step was taken towards justice in his case....

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the heroic WikiLeaks whistleblower and transgender activist currently jailed in the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, is now being threatened with “indefinite solitary confinement.”...

The reports about tens of thousands of desperate refugees scrambling out of the Middle East and North Africa, trying to reach some place in Europe, are excruciatingly painful. The number who have drowned along the way or died of thirst or hunger is unknown. Others survive these perilous journeys on overloaded boats only to be captured and either interned or turned back at the borders. Photographs show them to be thin, often to the point of emaciation, with few possessions other than the threadbare clothes on their backs....

The struggle of the fired Boston school bus drivers has now been going on for two years. That is a long time for four union leaders to be out of work. It is a long time for the union, Steelworkers Local 8751, to sustain its militant campaign to get the four rehired...

When New York billionaire and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump launched into his anti-immigrant tirade against Mexicans crossing the border, he was using a long-known political technique of plugging into the live wire of American resentment of “the other.”...

International attention is focusing on the coming struggle in the U.S. Congress to pass the Iran nuclear deal at the same time that the U.S. and Turkey have stepped up intervention in Syria. Under those conditions, we need to consider: Will militarist forces attempt to sabotage the agreement with Iran by provoking a wider war against Syria, which has an alliance with Iran?...

On July 29, 13 bold protesters rappelled down from the St. Johns Bridge,
which crosses the entrance to the Portland, Ore., harbor. Lashing themselves
together to form a human barrier, they remained in their swaying bivouacs for
forty hours, supported by 50 kayaks in the water below and supplied by other
protesters on the bridge above....

Miami is the haven for the Cuban exiles — those that
ran from the revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and those who later left
because of the economic conditions created by the U.S. blockade imposed on the
Cuban people....

The terrifying video of an African-American motorist’s life being snuffed out by a white racist cop, University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing, has been seen by millions of people worldwide....

According to the United Nations, at least 6,400 people have been killed since the start of Ukraine’s so-called anti-terrorist operation in April 2014 against the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the Donbass mining region bordering on Russia. This is widely understood to be a vast undercount. Donbass officials estimate 10,000 deaths, while a German intelligence report leaked last winter put the death toll closer to 40,000....

A sea of red T-shirts flooded the streets, while those wearing them roared with anger in front of Verizon’s corporate headquarters in Manhattan on July 25. Some of the shirts read “I can’t calm down, I need a contract,” “Will strike if provoked” and “We walked before, we’ll walk again,” referring to a 2011 strike....

On behalf of Code Pink, International Action Center, Georgia for
Peace, Gandhi BE Magazine, Gandhi for Peace, Euro Palestine, Stop the
War, The Egyptian Revolutionary Council, The National Coalition for
Democracy and Rejection of the Military Coup, The Egyptian Parliament
in Exile, The Conscious Front, and finally, the Gorbah Movement,
We would like to invite you to attend a press conference condemning
the execution of democracy through the execution of Egypt’s only
legitimate president, Mohamed Morsi. Attached are the conference’s
cover letter, press release, as well as a statement signed by numerous
politicians, human rights personalities and organizations....

Marxist thinkers from Frederick Engels to Dorothy Ballan have long maintained that, for most of human existence, the social structure was based on mother-right, or matriarchy, in which a fundamental equality existed between women and men....

Houston — How can someone, whose only mistake is to forget to use her car’s turn signal when changing lanes, wind up dead in a county jail just a few days later, with a medical examiner calling it suicide?...

Workers’ wages in the United States have been stagnant since the 1970s in terms of purchasing power. It is common knowledge that it now takes several wage earners in most working-class families just to meet basic expenses. Meanwhile, low-wage workers are on the move, fighting hard for a higher minimum wage and union representation....

It was one year ago on July 17 that 43-year-old Eric Garner, an African-American father of six children, died of a heart attack after a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put him in a chokehold while several other officers slammed his head and body to the ground on the streets of Staten Island, N.Y. Garner repeated, “I can’t breathe,” over and over before losing consciousness....

Yellow school buses are a common sight in the U.S. Usually the rides are shorter than the 2,300 miles we just covered in 10 days on a very special bus. Ours was just one of the latest to have traversed the North American continent since the early 1990s, to be donated to the revolutionary people of Cuba as a gift of love and solidarity. It was part of the Friendshipment Caravans, organized by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations/Pastors for Peace....

In Alabama, a Black teenager has died in police custody under suspicious circumstances. Kindra Darnell Chapman, 18 years old, was arrested July 14 by the Homewood city police, allegedly for stealing a cell phone on the street. Homewood is a suburb of Birmingham....

The agreement reached July 14 between Iran and the “5+1,” the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China) plus Germany, is a huge achievement — for Iran....

Muslim and Jewish groups have been raising money to help rebuild at least six Black churches in the South hit by arsonists in a racist backlash to the unity ignited by the June 17 massacre in Charleston, S.C....

“Today is a historic day and it is a great honor for us to announce that we have reached an accord on the Iranian nuclear solution, to make our world safer.” Federica Mogherini, European Union high representative for foreign and security policy, said this in Vienna on July 14....

For five years the European Central Bank, dominated by German finance capital, has engineered bailouts and imposed austerity on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. And for five years various establishment economists, politicians and pundits in the U.S. like Paul Krugman and James Galbraith have been frustrated and perplexed....

Jobless in a depression-era society, targeted by fascists like those in the Golden Dawn party and seeing benefits cut even for workers who are citizens, immigrant workers are near the bottom of Greek society, with perhaps only the refugees from ongoing wars below them. Immigrants find only the toughest jobs needing the least skills that pay little. Nearly all are excluded from Greek electoral life....

Finally. The profoundly offensive, pro-slavery Confederate flag no longer flies high in front of the State House grounds in Columbia, the capitol of South Carolina. It was taken down on July 10, 43 years after it was first hoisted in a ceremony “officially” marking the centennial of the start of the U.S. Civil War. In July 2000, a march of more than 50,000, mostly African Americans, demanded that the flag be removed. When state elected officials voted not to remove it, civil rights groups launched a boycott of South Carolina’s tourism industry...

A major demonstration in Newark, N.J., on July 25 — called the Million People’s March Against Police Brutality, Racial Injustice and Economic Inequality — has gained the support of over 100 community and grassroots organizations, union locals, religious groups, political prisoners defense committees, immigrant rights, women’s and LGBTQ groups. The July 25 march was initiated by the People’s Organization for Progress,which has a long history of mobilizing mass protests against police violence....

They are all exploited by imperialist finance capital. Now, in 2015, all are targets of big capital’s class war. From Wall Street to London, Paris and Frankfurt, the banks and the national states that ride shotgun for their interests are using the debt crisis to squeeze every last ounce of profit out of workers’ labor power....

With a gun to their heads, the leaders of Syriza, headed by Alexis Tsipras, have capitulated to the financial powers of Europe, headed by the German bankers. The terms of the agreement spell even graver hardship for the Greek masses and outright international bankers’ rule over Greece....

The Pentagon-backed and -coordinated bombing campaign has
killed thousands and wounded thousands more in Yemen since the air war by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council began on March 26. The Pentagon is providing intelligence, refueling technology and diplomatic cover to the Riyadh-based alliance....

On the afternoon of July 7, coinciding with the parliamentary debate in
Madrid on the defense agreement with the United States which makes the military
base of Morón, 40 miles southeast of Seville, the permanent headquarters
of USA-Africom, people gathered to show their rejection of it....

The Supreme Court has backed the use of an execution drug used in U.S.
prisons over the objection of death row inmates. By a vote of 5-4, the
court’s five right-wing justices on June 29 gave the stamp of approval to death-penalty states to utilize midazolam during executions. Their ruling in
Glossip v. Gross endorses painful deaths and has been widely denounced by
progressive forces everywhere....

My family lived in South Carolina before the Revolution. My great-grandfather and his kin wore gray. That flag offends me. So do Confederate Memorial Day and all Confederate monuments. Not because they’re “bad for business.” Because they’re wrong....

After re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States, the lifting of the blockade, among other aspects, will be indispensable for the normalization of relations. On July 1st, 2015, the President of the Councils of State and of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, and the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, exchanged letters through which they confirmed their decision to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries and open permanent diplomatic missions in the respective capitals as from July 20, 2015....

“The blockade has not been lifted. We cannot miss that point,” emphasized Gail Walker, Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization director and daughter of Pastors for Peace founder the Rev. Lucius Walker. She spoke June 24 at the Florida Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., to begin the 26th Friendshipment Caravan. The program included a video message from Kenia Serrano Puig, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship of the Peoples, and a greeting from Pastor Earl Trent Jr., an early caravan supporter....

Things finally jumped off at the Statehouse tonight. The Confederates had called another rally. When this reporter got there around 4:30 there was a small group of them with large Confederate flags and a small group of us with homemade anti-racist signs....

On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded immunity from liability to two San
Francisco police officers who, in 2008, had entered the room of Teresa Sheehan,
a mentally ill woman in a group home, and shot her five times....

Boston school bus drivers held a militant picket line June 18 outside the
headquarters of the notorious Veolia Corporation, which has renamed itself
Transdev. “Reinstate our fired leaders now!” was the main demand. The drivers’ union, Steelworkers Local 8751, has been fighting since October 2013 to get four fired leaders — President Andre Francois, Vice President Steve Kirschbaum, Financial Secretary Steve Gillis and Grievance Chair Garry Murchison — rehired....

It has been over six months since 12-year-old African-American Tamir Rice
was murdered by a white Cleveland police officer outside a popular neighborhood
recreation center. Despite ongoing demonstrations and numerous other actions,
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty has continued to drag his feet on
even sending the case to a grand jury....

The senseless and unspeakable massacre of nine Black people, ranging in ages
from 26 to 87, in an historic church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17 is yet
another grim reminder that racism, rooted in white supremacist ideology, is
alive and well in the United States. This massacre should put to rest once and
for all the false notion that the 2008 election of the first African-American
president, Barack Obama, ushered in a post-racial society....

Another mother has lost her child to the racist, brutal prison system. Kalief Browder, an African American who was only 22 years old, committed suicide on June 6, after having spent more than three years in jail at Rikers Island in New York City. He hung himself with an air conditioner cord at his home in the Bronx....

The racist attack on the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston was a planned and premeditated assault on the legacy of struggle waged by the African-American people for two centuries in South Carolina....

South Carolinians responded to the racist massacre in Charleston with a renewed fight to remove the battle flag of the Confederacy from the grounds of the State Capitol in Columbia, S.C. The presence of the slaveholders’ war flag and Confederate memorial belied the public grief affected by right-wing Gov. Nikki Haley and the state’s Republican power structure for the martyrs of Charleston. The flag is but one of many monuments glorifying the Confederate slavocracy across this city and state....

This festive event during June Pride Month honors Ancient Greek Lesbian lyricist from the Isle of Lesbos, who wrote and performed during an era when “…homosexuality was presumed to exist among the gods as a matter of course.” FREE, but guests are encouraged to buy a CD (with free download card) ...

An historic Black church in Charleston, S.C., has been hit by an act of
racist terrorism. The nine people killed on June 17 may not be victims of the
systematic racism of the police and courts that the Black Lives Matter movement has been combating. They also may not be the victims of an organized conspiracy — that remains to be seen. But their deaths were not accidental. The killings took place in a local atmosphere where it is normal for the state government to fly the flag of slavery on its lawn. Where the local cops have mingled with the Ku Klux Klan and recruited their members. And vice
versa....

When nine defenseless people are killed in a church, it’s not a
“shooting,” it’s a massacre. When a 21-year-old white male who wears racist hate badges on his jacket walks into a church and murders nine unarmed Black people, I don’t call that just a “hate crime” by a lone wolf. It’s a terrorist attack by a white supremacist. Unfortunately, the following description is exactly what happened on June 17 in Charleston, S.C., between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m....

Cleveland has made major headlines — and rightfully so — since the Nov. 22 shooting death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American, by a white police officer. Rice was killed outside of a recreation center for holding a fake BB gun....

A series of opinion articles have been published recently in Newsweek contradictorily condemning and praising the Barack Obama administration’s efforts to reassure the state of Israel that United States imperialism is on its side all the way in suppressing and eliminating the Palestinian people. The authors go so far as to caution Obama against drawing any comparison between the plight of African Americans and the Palestinian struggle for national liberation....

Even though peace talks are slated to begin on June 14 in Geneva between the major parties involved in the conflict over control of Yemen, the fighting rages on inside this underdeveloped Middle Eastern state....

Like medieval lords plotting against an impending peasant revolt after a bad
harvest, the heads of the seven most powerful imperialist countries — the
U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — met June 7-8 in
a renovated castle-turned-hotel in Elmau in southeastern Germany to plot on
behalf of the tiny group of billionaires who rule the world....

Ukraine’s far-right government, backed by Washington, launched a new military offensive against the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics on the night of June 2 through June 3.
The Donbass people’s militia responded quickly, first sending
Kiev’s forces scurrying in panic and then digging in for the hard battle
for control of Marinka, a city southwest of Donetsk’s capital, against a
Ukrainian military increasingly funded by the U.S. and armed with NATO
weaponry....

Oakland, Calif., Police Department officers took yet another young Black
man’s life on the morning of June 6. According to initial reports, the
man was unconscious behind the wheel of his car, which was stopped at the curb in a lane which exits from I-580 near the Lake Merritt shopping district. The police were called by firefighters after they had approached the car to provide assistance, but saw a gun on the passenger seat....

Ads and articles promoting travel to Cuba seem to be everywhere.
Didn’t President Barack Obama announce a new relationship with Cuba on
Dec. 17? Didn’t that mean the U.S. blockade of Cuba, a relic of the Cold
War, was over?...

Sexual harassment is a social practice entrenched in a history of oppression and violence against women, particularly the working class and people of color. It was endured by African American women in slavery and by women in domestic services. Passed down like a family secret, the act of sexual harassment has been protected and institutionalized by a capitalist society built on patriarchal control over women....

The Haitian parliament was essentially dissolved months ago when terms for all its members, except 10 senators, ran out. President Michel Martelly, who can’t run again, has been ruling by decree. Martelly’s prime minister, Evan Paul, holds office only on a de facto basis, since the Parliament has been dissolved and thus can’t approve his appointment....

Puerto Rico has been selling itself off since the 1990s, when the telephone company was privatized under Gov. Pedro Rosello. Since then, all Puerto Rico’s governments have been privatizing all public property, including the airports, health services, roads, the valuable pineapple industry, etc. The slogan of the progressive independence movement since then has been, “Puerto Rico is not for sale.”...

The Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly and Southern Christian Leadership Conference Call for Friday, June 5, 2015 Press Conference at 1 P.M. at 2011 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 to Announce and Release the Following Statement in Response to Organizer’s Car Being Shot Up –...

Today U.S.-made and paid-for missiles and bombs are raining down on people around the world. Washington funds violent right-wing movements from Venezuela to Syria to Macedonia. It is interfering in a regional dispute in the South China Sea to threaten China. It is establishing more military bases in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Here at home, U.S. police kill and brutalize people of color....

The government is planning to crush the Black Lives Matter uprising that swept the country in the aftermath of the rebellion against racist police violence in Ferguson, Mo., last year. The repression that is being prepared against this uprising will be far greater than the repression of the Occupy Wall Street movement because the Black Lives Matter uprising poses a vastly greater threat to the system....

Thirty women peace activists from 15 countries crossed the demilitarized zone separating north and south Korea on May 24. They called for an official end to the Korean War, the signing of a peace treaty and the reunification of Korea....

This report is one of several eyewitness accounts provided by International Action Center and FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) youth activist Caleb Maupin, who took part in a humanitarian aid mission to Yemen in May....

On May 29, as part of its stated intentions to improve relations with Cuba, the United States formally removed the island nation from its list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” even as it maintained its decades-old illegal blockade....

US. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sounded the alarm recently about the Greek debt crisis on his way to a G-7 finance ministers’ meeting in Dresden, Germany. “Brinkmanship is a dangerous thing when it only takes one accident,” Mr. Lew said at the London School of Economics. “No one should have a false sense of confidence that they know what the result of a crisis in Greece would be.” (New York Times, May 27)...

Mozgovoi’s spirit of defiance and internationalism will also fuel an international day of solidarity with Donbass called to coincide with the commander’s funeral on May 27. And, no doubt, many battles still to come....

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has called on supporters to join a campaign rejecting a smear campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution. Maduro was responding to a lengthy May 18 Wall Street Journal article that falsely accuses National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello of drug trafficking and money laundering and that slanders Bolivarian Venezuela as a “global cocaine hub.”...

The third round of talks between Cuba and the U.S. to normalize diplomatic relations took place at the U.S. State Department on May 21 and 22. In press conferences at the close of the meetings, the chief negotiators of both delegations characterized the meetings as professional, respectful and productive....

The Pentagon in the third week of May sent a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon
surveillance plane near Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea — called
the East Sea by Vietnam. The Fiery Reef is in the archipelago called the
Spratly Islands by the U.S., the Nanchan Islands by China and the Truong Sa
Islands by the Vietnamese....

After the complete acquittal on May 23 of Cleveland killer cop Michael
Brelo, the streets of Cleveland were thick with anger. Brelo was the main
triggerman in the brutal police slaughter of unarmed African-Americans Malissa
Williams and Timothy Russell on Nov. 29, 2012....

Malissa Williams, a 30-year-old woman, tragically lost her life on Nov. 29,
2012, in a hail of bullets, along with her 43-year-old companion, Timothy
Russell, at the hands of nine white Cleveland police officers....

From the Port of Djibouti in North Africa, it is with great sadness and burning outrage that I announce that the voyage of the Iran Shahed Rescue Ship has concluded. We will not reach our destination at the Port of Hodiedah in Yemen to deliver humanitarian aid....

Well over a hundred people, most from the local Yemeni
community, marched and rallied on May 16 against the Saudi bombing and
devastation of Yemen. They gathered at the United Nations Plaza in San
Francisco, marched down Market Street to the busy shopping area at Powell
Street, and then returned to the U.N. Plaza for a rally....

Since the start of this year, a groundswell of opposition has arisen against Royal Dutch Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. With barely any public notice, the Seattle Port Commission had granted a lease in early January for Shell to use Terminal 5 in that city to overhaul a Shell oil rig....

The US and Saudi Arabia are threatening to attack a humanitarian aid ship on the high seas! International observers, including US citizens,are aboard. This would be piracy and an act of war! Call the White House now at 202-456-1414 and 202-456-1111 and say: Let the aid ship pass!...

Among those killed was Derrick Griffith, dean of student affairs and enrollment management for Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, N.Y. Two of this writer’s co-workers at Amtrak’s “40” office — its New York dispatching center — were injured.

Political prisoner and internationally renowned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has once again been taken from the prison infirmary at SCI Mahnoy in Frackville, Pa.; this time to Geisinger Medical Center in Dansville,Pa. about three hours from Philadelphia....

Seventy years ago, on May 8 and 9, 1945, millions all over the world gave
shouts of joy and relief as the Nazi regime in Berlin crumbled while the Soviet
Union’s Red Army rolled into the German capital and hung the red flag
with its hammer and sickle on top of the Reichstag building, the parliament.
Throughout Europe in 1945 and the years following, even the enemies of the USSR had to acknowledge its primary role in the Nazi defeat....

This May 19 will mark the 125th birthday anniversary of the great anti-imperialist leader, Ho Chi Minh. “Uncle
Ho” was a leader of the National Liberation Front, a people’s army that defeated both French and U.S. military invaders in Vietnam. In honor of this legendary figure and the current Black Lives Matter uprising, the IAC is
printing the following excerpts from a report made by this Vietnamese communist at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International gathering held in July 1924 in Moscow during the “National and Colonial Question” session. He died in 1969, six years before Vietnam’s liberation from U.S. imperialism. Go to tinyurl.com ....

The United National Antiwar Coalition held its fourth national gathering in Secaucus, N.J., May 8-10 under the theme “Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad.” Over 400 delegates from the U.S. and Canada
took on the task of challenging endless U.S. imperialist wars abroad and the
increasing militarization of domestic police from Ferguson, Mo., to
Baltimore....

The murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown last Aug. 9 by white police officer Darren Wilson ignited an almost two-week uprising in Ferguson, Mo. Led by Black youth, this rebellion began the process of shining a spotlight on the deep-seated, horrifying atrocities that have been taking place inside and outside police departments around the U.S. for many decades. The current ground zero of this upsurge is Baltimore....

Why am I out at sea on the other side of the world? I am part of a humanitarian mission being carried out by the Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are attempting to bring medical supplies, flour, and water to the people of Yemen....

A ship containing over 2,500 tons of flour, rice, and medicine is departing from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The delegation of doctors, journalists, and activists organized by the Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran intends to deliver this much needed humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen, who are facing a horrific bombing campaign from Saudi Arabia....

In a stunning victory, the militant, fighting rank and file
of the Boston school bus drivers’ union, United Steelworkers Local 8751,
voted in the full slate of Team Solidarity candidates, led by four illegally
fired leaders, on the union’s Executive Board....

Journalist Nick Turse has researched the increasing role of the United
States Africa Command (Africom) over the last seven years, which he presents in his new book, “Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa” (Haymarket Books, 2015). These military operations have impacted most African countries through the utilization of military bases, waterways and airspace....

Last week the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for and
against legalizing same-sex marriage. Plaintiffs from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky
and Tennessee — where state courts upheld same-sex marriage bans — brought cases opposing the bans before the high court. The court’s ruling, expected in late June, will decide whether the U.S. Constitution gives same-sex couples the right to marry. SCOTUS will also decide if states must recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other states or countries. Same-sex marriage is legal in all but 13 states and in 17 countries....

The Baltimore People’s Power Assembly called a special rally and march for May Day, also known as International Worker’s Day, to demand justice for Freddie Grey and general amnesty for the hundreds of Black youth who were arrested during the April 27 rebellion following Grey’s funeral....

From April 30 to May 3, people in many U.S. cities held rallies, marches and other events in solidarity with the rebellious youth of Baltimore protesting police brutality. On May 1, immigrants, including many from Latin America, organized and called demonstrations for immigrant and workers’ rights, but they also stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and its latest manifestation in Baltimore. The International Action Center reports on some of these activities here....

Work with us! Help make this the successful event that it needs to be to send a strong message to officials that people have not forgotten and will never forget what happened that day and that we won’t stop resisting until the MOVE 9 and all political prisoners are home where they belong....

It is no coincidence that Baltimore’s state attorney, Marilyn Mosby, announced on May 1 that six police officers had been indicted and arrested for the murder of Freddie Grey, a day before a major march and rally had been scheduled to protest a lack of indictments and arrests of police since Grey’s death....

As we draft this appeal the city of Baltimore is being occupied by a regional mobilization of police and the National Guard. The mass outrage over the slaughter of Freddie Grey has grown from protest to resistance. Baltimore is the “new” Ferguson, and we need the intervention of all who have participated in the Black Lives Matter Movement on a national level and we need it now. No police have been arrested for the murder of Freddie Grey. No explanation for his death has been given except to say that it’s a “mystery!” More than 300 people have been arrested for resistance – while the cops are still free and on paid leave. We are calling on activists to turn this Friday, May 1st 2015, into BLACK LIVES MATTER MAY DAY. We realize that May Day is just a few days away. However, if you can organize to take it to the streets, the highways and the bridges in the same way that you did last fall and winter, it would make a world of difference in the struggle for justice at this critical moment. We applaud the longshore and warehouse workers union (ILWU) Local 10 in Oakland, Calif., as well as the longshore workers in Charleston, South Carolina for plans to shut the docks down on May Day in solidarity with struggle against racist police violence.
...

On Friday, April 24, Mumia Abu-Jamal was visited by his spouse, Wadiya Jamal,
who reported that his condition has worsened. She saw him again today and he
appears even more gravely ill. Everyone is asked to call the prison and the
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections immediately. If they hang up, call
again. Mumia was released from the prison infirmary three days ago even though he was in no condition to be in general population. His request to be seen by independent medical specialists was denied by the PA Department of Corrections. Yet he is in need of 24-hour care and supervision. He is too weak and in this state he may not be able ask for help. He may lose consciousness....

The twists and turns of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, from Cuba to Iran to Ukraine, show the ability of the right wing to undermine the policies of centrist forces within the ruling-class political establishment. This is an expression of the expansionist, militarist forces that have deep roots within U.S. capitalism....

Just days before the Pentagon was set to begin training troops from Ukraine’s National Guard, including the notorious Azov Battalion, Kiev’s parliament voted 254-0 on April 10 to ban “communist propaganda,” communist symbols and anything deemed as “glorification” of Soviet history....

On March 31 in Washington, D.C., the U.S. and Cuba held the first meeting on the topic of human rights. Cuba proposed this sub-discussion of the ongoing talks aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations and opening embassies that was launched on Dec. 17 by presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama....

The “VII Summit of the Americas,” to be held April 10-11 in Panama City, Panama, is of particular interest since Latin American and Caribbean states firmly told the Organization of American States there would be no further summits where Cuba was excluded, forcing the U.S. to agree....

This April 15 could be the largest united protest of fast food workers ever. Fast food workers, who have been in the forefront of the struggle for $15 an hour and a union, will be joined by low-wage workers in at least half a dozen industries, including carwash, child care and airport workers; adjunct professors; home care providers; and especially workers in low-wage sweatshops like Walmart and other big box retailers....

In Venezuela, Leopoldo López, who is responsible for the violence in the attempted coup against President Nicolás Maduro that left 43 people dead, is being treated very well while imprisoned for the crimes he committed, having access to a gym, computer, visits, etc. In contrast, in the USA, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been unjustly framed up for the murder of a cop and has been in prison since 1982 for standing up against racism and police brutality, is being denied a most basic right: adequate health care in a state attempt to assassinate him....

On March 30, 24-year-old Anthony Clark Reed died at the hands of Detroit police. The young African-American nursing student, also an autoworker, was stopped by police for an alleged traffic violation for having tinted windows on his vehicle. The windows, however, were factory-installed and thus not likely in violation of any state law....

On April 2, community members, activists and organizational leaders packed the historic National Black Theatre in Harlem, N.Y., for the opening session of the People’s Tribunal on Police Violence and Structural Racism. Organized by the People’s Power Assemblies, the tribunal was organized as the first in a series of events that would amplify the voices of those who have suffered in the racist and violent system in order to draw the connections between police brutality and other forms of systematic racism in the U.S...

There is a man in the state of Pennsylvania who has a street in France named after him. That man is Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and ex-member of the Black Panther Party — an organization classified as “terrorist” by the U.S. government. A former Black Panther, Mumia is now in his 26th year on Pennsylvania’s death row....

Car caravans carrying over 40 people travelled from Philadelphia and New York City today to SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pa., in an effort to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal. After months of medical neglect, this U.S. political prisoner, who has supporters worldwide, had been diagnosed with and hospitalized for diabetic shock on March 30....

Workers World Party commemorated and celebrated the life and contributions of our beloved comrade, Leslie Feinberg, with a memorial in New York City on March 28 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center at 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. Leslie was a member of the party’s national committee....

At 1 p.m. EDT on March 30, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal had a medical emergency, and was taken to the Intensive Care Unit at Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa. As of this morning, almost no information has been provided by hospital or prison authorities regarding his health and well-being....

U.S. efforts to overturn the government of Syria have now extended into a fifth year. It is increasingly clear that thousands of predictions reported in the corporate media by Western politicians, think tanks, diplomats and generals of a quick overturn and easy destruction of Syrian sovereignty have been overly optimistic, imperialist dreams. But four years of sabotage, bombings, assassinations and a mercenary invasion of more than 20,000 fighters recruited from over 60 countries have spread great ruin and loss of life....

Police repression against Wisconsin’s Black communities accompanies Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union and anti-worker “right-to-work” law, which went into effect March 9 as part of his austerity program. Given the combined impact of these two attacks, the political servants of Wall Street have to worry that a mass rebellion in Milwaukee could unite wide sectors of the working class and oppressed and spread throughout Wisconsin....

Martese Johnson, a 20-year-old African American, has been added to the already too-long list of victims of brutal, racial profiling by the police. Unlike the stolen lives of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Ramarley Graham, Jessie Hernandez and countless other youth of color, Johnson survived to bravely tell the world that his Black life matters....

When a vile, racist video by members of the Oklahoma University chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity was put online, strong demonstrations by students, teachers, community members and even the school football team expressed outrage. Many on Twitter condemned the message. The video showed fraternity members on a chartered bus singing a song filled with the “N” word and promoting the lynchings of African Americans....

As activists, students and workers gather in Washington, D.C., for the “Spring Rising” anti-war mobilization March 18-21, many are probably unaware that 300 U.S. troops arrived in Ukraine this month, with another 300 expected to join them shortly....

Women are the fastest growing prison population in the U.S. due primarily to harsh sentencing for nonviolent crimes and drug offenses. Over the last three decades the number of women incarcerated has mushroomed, though they account for less than 7 percent of the country’s 2.4 million inmates. This gives the U.S. the highest proportion of prisoners of any country in the world....

Ever since the first International Women’s Day was observed in 1911, women all over the world have been commemorating IWD with marches, rallies, speakouts and meetings. Women in the U.S. are no exception. Spurred on by the rising of working women in the fight for $15 an hour and a union, and the upsurge of the national Black Lives Matter movement, IWD events were held from coast to coast over the March 6-8 weekend. A roundup of international activities will be featured in next week’s issue....

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder officially announced that Darren Wilson, the police officer who had killed unarmed African-American youth Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo., would not be indicted on federal civil rights violations charges due to lack of probable cause. Wilson, who has since resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, claimed that he felt threatened by the 18-year-old before he drew his weapon and fired numerous shots into the young man’s body....

A jubilant, determined crowd of more than 100,000 people marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., from morning to afternoon on March 8 to mark the 50th Jubilee anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” a key event in the Black Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s....

Demand that he order his union busting School Bus bus company, Veolia/Transdev, rehire the 4 illegally fired USW 8751 leaders (Vice President Steven Gillis, Recording Secretary, Chief Steward and Civil Rights Committee Chair Andre Francois, Steward and former 3 term President Garry Murchison and USW 8751 Grievance Chair and founder Stevan Kirschbaum). The Mayor's Vendor contract with Veolia gives the City full and sole authority to settle all grievances. HE CAN ORDER THE IMMEDIATE REINSTATEMENT WITH FULL BACK PAY TODAY! NO EXCUSES! Tell him, "IF YOU STAND FOR UNION RIGHTS, PROVE IT! Reinstate the 4 fired leaders NOW!" SAY NO TO UNION BUSTING! JUSTICE FOR UNION DRIVERS, SAFETY FOR CHILDREN!
...

The campaign to rehire and win justice for four
Boston school-bus drivers, illegally fired by the notorious union-busting
Veolia Corp., got a big shot in the arm on March 5. After only only ten minutes
of deliberation, a jury voted unanimously to acquit union leader Steve
Kirschbaum of all charges brought by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts....

The ruling class of Boston has tried everything to bust the school bus drivers union, United Steelworkers Local 8751. They brought in the global union-busting behemoth corporation Veolia in 2013. Veolia locked out the workers in October of that year and then fired four of the union leaders in November. The courts are now being used to go after the union’s grievance chair and founder, Steve Kirschbaum....

International Women’s Day, March 8, became an official working-class holiday 105 years ago. Revolutionary women were inspired by a march of 15,000 garment workers, mostly women immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe, in New York on March 8, 1908....

It is 50 years since Lorraine Hansberry, a renowned playwright and political activist on the left, died on Jan. 12, 1965. Only 34, she had led a full life and intervened in many of the significant developments in the African-American liberation movement of the 1960s....

On Feb. 26, 2012, unarmed Black teen Trayvon Martin was murdered by a neighborhood vigilante. On July 17, 2014, the murder of unarmed Eric Garner by the New York City Police Department was videotaped, with his last words being “I can’t breathe.” Yet on Dec. 2, the grand jury decided to only indict the man who filmed the murder. On Nov. 24, Officer Darren Wilson was not charged with the fatal shooting of the unarmed Black teen, Michael Brown, back in August. On Nov. 22, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by Cleveland police for playing with a toy gun. The officer has yet to be charged....

Since the Geneva interim agreement was signed between Iran and P5+1 Nations, on November, 24th 2013, two previous deadlines have failed to gain any tangible results. Iran and P5+1 have set another deadline for the end of March to come up with some agreement .Additional four months are included for any technical work needed to be finalized. Both, Iran and the United States believe that any more extensions of the talks do not serve any purpose. They are reaching the final steps of negotiation, to either close a deal or walk away, the latter resulting in a new round of full scale hostilities and even the danger of military confrontation....

Comrade Abu Ahmad Fuad, deputy general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Comrade Abu Sami Marwan, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, met with a U.S. delegation to Syria, which arrived in Damascus on Tuesday [Feb. 24]. The delegation was headed by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general, and included U.S. leftist activists and leaders, including former member of Congress Cynthia McKinney and Sara Flounders, director of the International Action Center [headquartered] in New York City....

In these times, Local 8751 is a rarity, a seeming throwback to a bygone era. But the bosses fear this union. The bosses are treating it as such a threat because if this local union’s example spreads, the capitalist class is in trouble....

The independent people’s republics of Novorossiya celebrated an historic victory of the anti-fascist people’s militias over U.S.-backed Ukrainian military forces near the railroad hub town of Debaltsevo on the shared border of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region....

Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, hiring around 1 percent of all U.S. workers. Its announcement that it will raise what it pays to 500,000 workers to at least $9 an hour in April and $10 an hour next year has had a major impact. And of course, the reaction on Wall Street was immediate: Walmart’s stock price dropped by 3 percent....

Jim Crow justice: These three words describe why Rodney Reed, an African-American man, has been on Texas’ death row since 1998, facing a March 5 execution date. Reed was convicted of murdering Stacey Stites, a white woman with whom he had an intimate relationship in Bastrop, Texas....

News broke on Feb. 20 that an agreement between the Pacific Maritime Association — the organization of the West Coast port bosses — and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union would allow full-time work to unload a two-month backup of shipping pending a ratification vote of the union. The PMA had imposed mini lockouts for the past months on the union in an attempt to win a contract that left workers at a disadvantage. But the battle is still on...

An outrageous miscarriage of justice occurred Feb. 3 in Indiana based on a real miscarriage. Purvi Patel, a 33-year-old, unmarried woman of South Asian-American descent, was found guilty of two contradictory crimes: feticide and neglect of a child. In March she could be sentenced to 70 years in prison....

Ever since Comandante Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1998 and the Bolivarian Revolution began, there has been no time that the opposition — supported and, to a large extent, led by the United States — has stopped trying to overturn the revolutionary process. It is a story repeated many times in Latin America — so much so that there’s a joke that “the U.S. is the only country where there are no coups because there is no Yankee embassy there.”

The heinous, senseless murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Syrian descent; his spouse, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Palestinian descent and all Muslim, near the campus of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on Feb. 10, has evoked shock, sadness and outrage worldwide. Protests and vigils have been held in the U.S. and throughout the world, including Occupied Gaza, to expose the root cause — Islamophobia — of the execution-style murders of these young people....

With offices in the U.S. and Canada, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has worked to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America since its establishment in 1994. It is America’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. Because Minnesota is home to the largest Somali diaspora in the U.S., much of it in Minneapolis/St. Paul, the state’s CAIR office is often involved with advocacy for people of Somali origin—hearing complaints, advising them of their rights, and helping to resolve issues of harassment, discrimination, and bias...

Six people died horrible deaths when a Metro-North commuter train collided with a sports utility vehicle in Valhalla, N.Y., a northern suburb of New York City, on Feb. 6. Five of the bodies were burned beyond recognition.eing injured, Smalls helped passengers get off the train....

Thousands turned out Feb. 11 at a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in remembrance of three young Muslims murdered in their home near the school. Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his spouse of two months, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, all Palestinian, were shot in the head execution-style on Feb. 10....

Try to imagine this movie: Iraq’s urban population, angered by a foreign invasion, mobilizes to resist an army of occupation. The robocop occupation troops are weighed down with body armor and heavy weapons. They drive armored Hummers decorated with death heads and kick down doors to invade Iraqi homes. Young Iraqis wearing tatters risk death to challenge the robocops. Whole families support this resistance....

Millions of people around the world have watched with alarm as the U.S.-backed government of Ukraine escalates its war of terror against the independent Donetsk and Lugansk Peopleâ€™s Republics of the Donbass region. But in Washington and European capitals, there was utter silence about the massacre of civilians â€“ until the anti-fascist volunteer militias of Donbass surrounded up to 7,000 Ukrainian troops in the Debaltsevo region in early February....

A case before the U.S. Supreme Court which seeks police exemption from the Americans with Disabilities Act has critical importance for all those seeking to stop unwarranted police killings. This case involves police shootings of people with mental illness....

Millions of people around the world watched with alarm as the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government again escalated its war of terror against the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the Donbass region. But there was utter silence about the massacre of civilians in Washington and European capitals – until the anti-fascist volunteer militias of Donbass surrounded up to 7,000 Ukrainian troops in the Debaltsevo region last week....

Some writers today note that an often hidden and misrepresented anti-slavery rebellion in 1811 along the German Coast in Louisiana â€” located above New Orleans on the Mississippi River â€” was the largest African uprising during the antebellum period....

Yes, slavery existed in the North, too. New York was one of the largest centers of slaveholding in the U.S. In 1991, a gravesite was discovered during a dig for the construction of a new federal building in New York City’s Lower Manhattan area. It was 300 years old then. An 18th century map of the area revealed the site was the location of a “Negros Burial Ground” covering six acres, approximately five city blocks....

A standing-room-only crowd gathered at the Kingsessing Recreational Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 31 for a celebration of the life of William Phillips, better known as Phil Africa. A MOVE 9 member, he died under suspicious circumstances at Pennsylvania’s SCI Dallas prison on Jan. 10 at the age of 59....

When the Troika — the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank — disbursed 226.7 billion euros to Greece between May 2010 and the present, European capitalists and politicians spoke of these funds as if they were a gift to the Greek people. In reality, the funds went almost exclusively to bailing out the banks, provided little benefit to the people and increased Greece’s public debt....

The U.S. government says it is discussing — if it is not already a done deal — sending $3 billion in heavy arms to the Kiev government in Ukraine, which was installed by a U.S.-inspired coup last February. Sending these weapons will, at a minimum, bring more suffering to millions of people in Ukraine....

A record-breaking snowstorm has shut down streets, schools and airline flights throughout the Northeast. With 34.1 inches of snow since Jan. 27, this is now Boston’s snowiest week since modern weather records began in 1891, according to the Weather Channel. This did not stop 75 people from packing the courtroom to overflowing at Dorchester District Court today. It was another powerful show of support for the Boston School Bus Drivers Union and its founder Steve Kirschbaum....

For almost 400 years, since the first English settlers began stealing land from the original inhabitants of North America, legal practice has been to deny couples of the same sex the right to marry....

The jury trial on trumped-up charges against union leader Steve Kirschbaum will begin on Feb. 2. After months of pretrial hearings and false starts, this founder of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union will be in court facing serious felony charges. United Steelworkers Local 8751 was already in a fierce fight against global union-buster Veolia, which locked out the union members and then fired four of its leaders in October 2013. As support grew for the campaign to reinstate the leaders – Kirschbaum, Andre Francois, Garry Murchison and Steve Gillis — Veolia resorted in June to manufacturing four felony charges against Kirschbaum. Everyone watching this case knows that the charges are fraudulent and are meant to break the back of this fighting, majority Haitian and Cape Verdean union. Two of the charges have already been dismissed....

Few events expose the utter hypocrisy of U.S. politicians’ grand words about democracy so starkly as their praise for the recently deceased King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. For decades U.S. imperialism and all the imperialist powers have given political, military and diplomatic support to the corrupt feudal family that rules Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil....

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.
...

In the early morning hours of Jan. 24, three GRAD missiles struck a residential area on the outskirts of Mariupol, the second largest city in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), formerly part of southeastern Ukraine. Reports indicate that at least 30 people died and nearly 100 were injured....

On Jan. 21, the apartheid Zionist regime of Benjamin Netanyahu was authorized by the United Nations General Assembly to host the first-ever conference devoted to the rise of worldwide “anti-Semitism.”...

With an air of absolute cynicism, the Pentagon announced on Jan. 16 that it will send 400 combat troops and 600 other personnel to the Mideast to train Syrian so-called “moderates” to fight forces of the Islamic State (ISIL). Congress has allocated $5 billion to fund this program....

A horrific war is unfolding on the territory of the former Soviet Union at the behest of Washington and Wall Street. The Kiev regime in Ukraine has ordered jets, missiles, artillery, mortars and land mines to target homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces in the Donbass region in a war of terror waged with U.S. weapons and taxpayer money against an anti-fascist resistance movement....

National days of action were held from Jan. 15, the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Jan. 19, the national holiday commemorating him. Activists with the People’s Power Assembly, the Black Lives Matter movement and many others joined forces to reclaim King’s anti-racist legacy and demand an end to police brutality and murder. Events were held in dozens of cities in the U.S. and Canada....

Institutionalized racism in the U.S. comes in many forms — some of it subtle, some not so subtle. The not so subtle, to put it mildly, includes the police murders of Black and Brown people, especially youth, too numerous to mention here. Heroic national resistance to this police terror began on Aug. 10, one day after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. This resistance, with all its ebbs and flows, continues today with many protests Jan. 15-19 that honor the struggle legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....

The movie “Selma,” which chronicles the 54-mile march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, was distributed nationally on Jan. 9 and has already been viewed by millions across the U.S. and the world. The Associated Press reported Jan. 11 that “Selma” came in second at the weekend box office, garnering $11.2 million....

Last November, the whole world watched with horror the heartbreaking video
of the Cleveland police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Police officer
Timothy Loehmann gunned down Rice immediately after coming upon him playing
with a toy gun....

If the great Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive
today, he would unequivocally lend his name and support to the national
protests being called in his honor against racism and especially police terror.
Beginning on Jan. 15, the 87th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth, protests
will begin all over the country culminating on Jan. 19, the federal King
holiday won in 1986 through mass protests....

A protest march and rally against racist police terror, called “Strike Against Racism,” tied up traffic in the Harbor East shopping area of downtown Baltimore on the evening of Jan. 15, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. Some 400 people voiced their opposition to brutal police tactics, including the arrest of a young organizer just a few hours before the rally began....

An upsurge in mass demonstrations and rebellions across the United States
portends much for developments in 2015. The federal government and ruling class have not seriously addressed the underlying factors associated with the rise in police killings and other racist incidents. The profound disconnect between the ruling Democratic and Republican parties and the African-American masses was starkly revealed last year when voter turnouts were low, while tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the streets against police terrorism and the racist criminal justice system. These militant protests and urban rebellions were not planned by the mainstream Civil Rights organizations, but grew out of the objective conditions facing tens of millions of oppressed people....

New Year’s Eve marked the one-year anniversary of the release from
prison of people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart, who was imprisoned for
“aiding and abetting a terrorist organization.” Her client in the
case was Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, whom the U.S. government labeled a terrorist and convicted. On Dec. 31, 2013, Stewart was granted a compassionate medical release due to her metastatic cancer....

Jan. 11, the French imperialist bourgeoisie mobilized and manipulated a massive demonstration in all the country’s major cities under hypocritical slogans extolling Western civilization and alleged “freedom of speech.” Their goal — which they share with U.S. and European Union imperialism — is a reactionary modern crusade against colonial peoples, mostly Muslims, in the guise of a “war on terror.”...

On Sunday, Jan. 11, a massive demonstration took place in Paris in sympathy with the staff members of the satirical cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo who were killed on Jan. 7, as well as a Muslim police officer and four patrons of a Jewish grocery killed in two armed attacks that week....

MOVE 9 member Phil Africa died in prison on Jan. 10 under what family members are calling “suspicious circumstances.” Six days earlier, Africa reportedly wasn’t feeling well and went to the prison infirmary in the State Correctional Institution at Dallas, Pa. MOVE members who drove to SCI-Dallas were denied a visit by the prison....

How do we put in perspective the international media focus on the massacre of 12 journalists in Paris on Jan. 7 at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, notorious for its racist anti-Muslim caricatures and lack of response to the routine, daily, racist police murders of Black youth in the U.S.? Why were any protests banned in France of 15 journalists who were killed among the 2,000 deaths in the Israeli assault of Gaza this past summer? Don’t those lives matter?...

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Select Committee’s report on CIA torture of terror suspects, we are reminded how little Americans know about how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency rolls in the real world....

“We take seriously North Korea’s attack that aimed to create
destructive financial effects on a U.S. company and to threaten artists and
other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free
expression,” said the White House....

Over the past nine days, two police funerals in New
York got massive coverage in the media, showing ruling class support for the
cops. Both funerals were also political demonstrations by the police, demanding
to continue their policy of unrestrained racist brutality against oppressed
people....

An upsurge in mass demonstrations and rebellions across the United States
portends much for developments in 2015. The federal government and ruling class have not seriously addressed the underlying factors associated with the rise in police killings and other racist incidents....

The Cuban revolution values education. According to World Bank statistics,
no country uses more of its gross domestic product for education than Cuba.
Nearly 13 percent of the total value of all the goods and services produced in
Cuba over a year, or one of every eight euros, is used to provide free
education through the post-graduate level. ...

Now that the threat of the spread of Ebola within the United States has
diminished — for the present — news of the crisis has dropped into
the back pages of the corporate-owned major newspapers and off the broadcast
media. But the Ebola epidemic remains a continuing danger in parts of Africa
and an ongoing threat that requires worldwide attention and action....

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died Jan. 1, had more jails under his authority than all the other New York state governors put together. All 30 jails built during his three administrations are concentration camps for poor people. That’s not the legacy emphasized in the fawning obituaries of the capitalist media, but it’s Mario Cuomo’s real legacy as New York governor from 1983 to 1995....

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and the 75th anniversary of the start of World War II. It is 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the so-called "Cold War" and brought the false promise that massive military spending would be converted into a "peace dividend" for the people Today the United States today is waging war, directly or by proxy, against the entire world...

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984....

On behalf of anti-fascists and anti-war activists in the United States, Colombia, France, Greece and the United Kingdom who are organizing in solidarity with the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, we appeal urgently to you to secure the immediate release of four activists reportedly being held by the Vostok Battalion....

Since my election as President of the State Council and Council of Ministers I have reiterated on many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally with a wide variety of topics without detriment to the national independence and self-determination of our people....

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney, now being held in Jackson State Prison, remains in good spirits despite the racist injustice that has landed him there. He was sentenced to up to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on five signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower....

This powerful gathering brought together primarily Black activists from many Southern states to discuss campaigns and conditions of the region and develop strategies for building an anti-racist human rights movement as well as the re-emergence of a national, unified Black liberation movement....

According to Chief Jose Lopez of the Durham Police Department, “outside agitators” have now penetrated Durham’s local protest and social justice movement. According to Chief Lopez, out-of-towners are the culprits causing trouble and influencing our city’s peaceful protesters to block traffic and storm shopping malls....

Demonstrations to protest racist police killings and to assert “Black Lives Matter” have continued strong throughout the United States since the Dec. 13 national march in Washington, D.C., and the massive march in New York the same day. Protests have taken place in many other cities and towns, large and small. Walkouts, die-ins, road closures, traffic stoppages, town hall meetings, rallies and other forms of protest have occurred daily across the country. Here are reports from activists in several cities....

It is an outrage that Eric Garner was killed by a wolfpack of racist cops
and a chokehold. It is an even greater outrage that, although the attack was
caught on videotape for the whole world to see, the killers were not brought to
trial....

In case anyone thought that Washington’s recent moves to modify its
policy toward Cuba mean the imperialist monster has suddenly mellowed, the
White House, State Department, FBI, CIA and Pentagon have all cleared up that
misunderstanding....

The current national uprising against police terror sweeping the U.S.,
following the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, is helping to shed a
bright light on the racist war against Black youth, rooted in slavery and Jim
Crow racism. The demise of Reconstruction, a radical period when freed Black
people attempted to build institutions to codify democratic rights, ushered in
an era of semi-slavery that included horrific lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan and
other fascistic formations....

The police have been desperately searching or waiting for some occurrence that they can use as a weapon to crush the most powerful, widespread, national mass uprising against racist police terror and murder since the 1960s. Until yesterday, the frame-up of activists from MillionsMarchNYC on Dec. 13 was the weapon. We demand immediate amnesty for those targeted activists accused of the alleged attacks on New York Police Department detectives on the Brooklyn Bridge. But now, the police — and the powers that be who rule over society and whose interests the police “protect and serve” — have got a much bigger weapon. The Dec. 20 killing of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, allegedly by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who afterwards allegedly killed himself in a subway station, is NOW that weapon. We underscore the word “allegedly” because all we know about what happened is what the police have told us. And while at the moment we have no information that counters the police story, we always suspect whatever the police say because they lie all the time.
...

Since the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on
Aug. 9, and then the failure of a grand jury to indict white police officer
Darren Wilson, mass demonstrations and rebellions have erupted across the
country, bringing national and international attention to the plight of African
Americans at the hands of law enforcement, the grand jury system and
prosecutors....

By an overwhelming vote of 411-10, House Republicans and Democrats alike
voted “Yes” to an inflammatory resolution threatening war with
Russia and supporting the repressive, far-right coup regime in Ukraine.

Although the resolution was symbolic and not attached to any specific
legislation, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, one of the handful who voted against the
resolution, denounced it as the declaration of “a new Cold War” by
Washington. (RT.com, Dec. 5)...

Another racist injustice has been committed. Here
on Dec. 14, Berrien County Judge Sterling Schrock sentenced the Rev. Edward
Pinkney, leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization, to 30 to
120 months after a trial by an all-white jury....

The four-month uprising against police violence received a tremendous boost on Dec. 13 — a national day of actions called by Ferguson and St. Louis, Mo., organizers. In many U.S. cities, thousands — and even tens of thousands — of determined and militant activists and ordinary people took to the streets to demand justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, John Crawford, Trayvon Martin and all victims of racist police and vigilante terror....

The current national uprising against police violence dominates the U.S.
political terrain. The revolt began with the Ferguson, Mo., rebellion, ignited
by the broad daylight police murder of African-American 18-year-old Michael
Brown by a white cop on Aug. 9. Black youth who racist white police officers
humiliated, terrorized and demonized day in and day out proclaimed defiantly in
the streets that enough is enough — despite the cops’ tanks, rubber bullets and tear gas....

The government of the United States has done what it
repeatedly swore it would never do: It has freed the last of the Cuban 5.
Today Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Gerardo
Hernández were finally released from U.S. jails after more than 16 years
of unjust imprisonment. René González and Fernando González had
already served their full prison terms and returned to Cuba. Those whom René González termed “the jury of millions”
— who had organized, picketed, written letters, signed
petitions, collected money for newspaper ads, investigated, inveighed on
parliamentarians, climbed mountains, rode bicycles, tweeted, wrote poems,
plays, songs and more in every corner of the globe — rejoiced. The
steadfast Cuban people joyfully welcomed their heroes: the five men who
sacrificed so much to protect them from terrorist attacks launched from U.S.
territory during the 1990s....

Tens of thousands of Haitians have come out into the streets repeatedly in the last month. They demand that President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe leave office and that the 6,000 troops of the United Nation’s occupation force, called Minustah, leave Haiti....

Recent reports claim that Islamic State camps have been set up in Libya, the North African country in chaos after the U.S./NATO-led bombing and ground war in 2011 ousted the Gadhafi government and destroyed Africa’s most prosperous and stable state....

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture reveals in detail the unrestrained brutality its operatives have carried out at secret sites around the world. Reading the disclosures in the 500-page executive summary of the committee’s findings is somewhat comparable to witnessing the strangling of Eric Garner by the police in Staten Island or hearing the testimony of witnesses who saw the unarmed, 18-year-old Michael Brown shot down in cold blood in Ferguson, Mo....

Yet another vigil was held Dec. 7, this one by the family of O’Shaine Evans, who was killed by Officer David Goff of the San Francisco Police Department on Oct. 7. Evans was shot multiple times. Born in Jamaica, he was living in Oakland with his mother, while training to be a boxer....

Over 100 students and supporters gathered at Sproul Hall at the University of California here on Dec. 3 to call attention to the role of the U.S. government in the disappearance of 43 students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Mexico. The Mexican government has admitted that the police in Iguala, the town where the students disappeared, had turned them over to local druglords on orders of the mayor....

On Dec. 8, protests in cities across the country against police killings of Black people entered the sixth consecutive day. Whether it was Tampa, Miami and ­Atlanta or Berkeley, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Seattle; Austin, Houston and Tucson or Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and dozens of other cities — the U.S. rulers have witnessed the most widespread and sustained demonstrations in decades....

December 4 was a phenomenal day for fast food workers. They shut down the grills, closed the cash registers and walked off their jobs, joining their brothers and sisters in a one-day strike in 190 cities. It was the eighth and most far-reaching strike day so far since fast food workers began their walkouts two years ago in their fight for a $15 hourly wage and a union....

With the police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on Nov. 22, Cleveland has become, like Ferguson and Staten Island, a particular place associated with a widespread systemic problem. The news of young Rice’s murder came out near the time of the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson....

For millions, it was both horrifying and shocking news. But for other millions it was indeed horrifying but not unexpected. It was the announcement that white killer cop, Daniel Pantaleo, would not be indicted by a 24-member Staten Island, N.Y., grand jury for the July 17 videotaped, illegal-chokehold murder of 43-year-old Eric Garner, an African American. This decision, made public on Dec. 3, has ignited an unprecedented massive anti-police uprising across the U.S. Garner could be heard on the video, saying, “I can’t breathe” at least 11 times as he was being grabbed around the neck by Pantaleo, with at least five other police officers pulling his hands and arms behind his back and pressing his head to the pavement, ultimately causing him to go into cardiac arrest....

In 2011, a heroic mass revolution deposed U.S.-supported Egyptian dictator Gen. Hosni Mubarak. This uprising was an inspiration to poor and oppressed people all over the world. Its current assassins — which include the new military regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and U.S. imperialism — deserve the condemnation of all progressive and justice-seeking people everywhere....

Demonstrations expressing outrage over the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner took place over the Dec. 6-7 weekend and into Dec. 9. The most frequent chants at most protests were “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe.” At the University of California, Berkeley , on Dec. 4, the California Black Student Union held a four-and-a-half-hour occupation of the Golden Bear Café, directly across from the Sproul Hall Administration building on campus. Police had shut down Sproul Hall, the original site of the BSU rally, presumably to prevent its occupation. Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party, was one of the many speakers to address the hundreds who joined the rally. >On Dec. 6, the 50th anniversary of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, cops made several arrests, shot tear gas and even rubber bullets into the crowd. On Dec. 6 and 7, demonstrators started at the campus gates and zig-zagged through the streets, demanding “Shut it down for Michael Brown” and all Black and Brown youth who have been targeted and killed by the police. Each time the police tried to stop the large swell of protesters, the crowd took off in another direction....

Clarence Moses-El has been in prison since 1987, when he was sentenced to 48 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. He has maintained his innocence since the beginning. The three people originally identified as suspects by the victim were never arrested nor were they ever questioned....

Italy, as part of NATO, must allocate an average of $65 million a day to military spending, according to official NATO data, although the number according to SIPRI is $90 million per day. According to the commitments made by the government in the framework of the Alliance, Italian military spending will increase to over $120 million per day (100 million euro)....

Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old unarmed Black father, was taking the stairs with his partner at their apartment building in the Louis H. Pink Houses, a public housing project in East New York, Brooklyn, when he was shot to death on Nov. 20 by members of the New York Police Department....

Black, Brown and — to a greater extent even than in earlier protests in solidarity with Ferguson — white youth came out in great numbers and took the streets behind African-American leadership after the announcement that no charges would be brought against any of the cops responsible for the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, N.Y. Tens of millions of people had seen the killing on video. The result was that on Dec. 3 and, in even larger numbers on Dec. 4, protests across the country that involved as many as 200,000 people disrupted automobile, bus and rapid-transit traffic. This happened in dozens of cities, including Boston, New York, Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle....

While celebrities these days are not particularly known for their political
courage or progressive stances, many have spoken out, particularly
African-American artists, entertainers, musicians, actors, athletes and others,
against the outrageous non-indictment of killer cop Darren Wilson in the
shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo....

No one was really surprised that Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch
failed to get a St. Louis County grand jury to indict Darren Wilson, the
Ferguson, Mo., police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on
Aug. 9. It is rare that police officers are held accountable for the murders of
Black and Brown youth....

With the grand jury in Missouri refusing to bring any charges
against the white police officer who gunned down unarmed 18-year-old Michael
Brown on Aug. 9, President Barack Obama has revealed his incapacity to address the African-American national question at a time of rebellion and mass
demonstrations in Ferguson and other areas around the United States.
...

The national movement touched off Nov. 24 by the killing of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Mo., reached over 170 cities. It is unprecedented in scope, going way beyond this recent killing to take on the front-line forces of the racist,
capitalist state: the police. The police are a racist occupation force
everywhere there is a community of oppressed people — Black, Latino/a,
Asian, Muslim or Native. They are the universal target of the new movement....

NYC: Show your OUTRAGE over NO indictment of police murder of #ERICGARNER
#thisstopstoday - Peoples Power Assembly is encouraging people to GO THURS?DEC 4th @ 5:30 pm BE at FOLEY SQ / WORK SESSION TODAY to help prepare and also carry materials down to the action Come to the Solidarity Center 147 W 24th St., 2nd floor 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm. Call or text Kaylee at 507.313.8322 if you are available.The Solidarity Center will be open as a SAFE SPACE for activists, Please call us / Report in 212.633.6646. If you have been ARRESTED, Witness an ARREST or are doing JAIL SUPPORT at a demonstration, Please contact the Nat'l Lawyers Guild NLG-NYC HOTLINE at 212.679.6018. FRI - DEC 5: Meeting with panel discussion on how to support National Struggle against Police Terror 7 pm (dinner at 6:30) Solidarity Center 147 W 24th St., 2nd floor, NY, NY 10011
...

I was thinking about the national holiday, “Thanksgiving,” the other day. I won’t even go into what a horrible shame this American holiday is based on. Instead, I will just let it remind me of the common bond I have with all my brothers and sisters of the Earth. Even if Thanksgiving, the holiday, is based on an incorrect portrayal of history, the concept of being thankful is a universal truth. I mean, let’s face it, being thankful/grateful has been part of Indian Nations much longer than the invention of a holiday....

Once again on the fourth Thursday in November, United American Indians of New England have gathered on this hill to observe a National Day of Mourning. Today, we mark the 45th time we have come here, in all kinds of weather, to mourn our ancestors and speak the truth about our history. Those who started National Day of Mourning could not have envisioned that their descendants and the descendants of their supporters would still be here, year after year, carrying on this tradition. Many of the elders who stood on this hill and organized that first day of mourning are no longer with us, but we feel their spirits guiding us today....

We want to welcome all the Indigenous people who are here. We stand here in solidarity with the struggles of Indigenous peoples throughout the world.

We greet our many allies from the African diaspora, whether you are from Dorchester or Jamaica or Nigeria. We welcome all of our Latino and Asian and Arab allies. We send a special shoutout to our Palestinian sisters and brothers, whose struggle is the same as ours. I saw a sign earlier: From Ferguson to Palestine, occupation is a crime. Yeah, that’s right. We welcome everyone here from the Two-Spirit community. We welcome our many white allies. We say “Bonjour” to our Haitian friends. Thanks to all who have traveled a long distance and sacrificed to get here, to be a part of National Day of Mourning....

Indigenous people and their supporters gathered on Coles Hill in Plymouth, Mass., for the 45th annual National Day of Mourning, organized by United American Indians of New England. A spirited march followed a rally, and then a potluck dinner and social at two local churches. NDOM brings the truth to light about the real meaning of “Thanksgiving” for Native peoples — genocide, theft of Indigenous lands and racist repression....

The demonstrators had chained themselves to two trains, one in each direction, and then to benches on the platforms, to keep the trains from moving. Meanwhile, a support rally was held outside the station on the ground floor....

The fighting, angry spirit of the people of Ferguson, Mo., following the decision not to prosecute racist killer-cop Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown seems to have carried into many of the more than 2,250 reported strikes at Walmart stores around the United States from Nov. 26 through Nov. 28, “Black Friday.”
...

Resistance and anger over the failure of a grand jury to indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown continued over the so-called Thanksgiving holiday, when activists and community members held protests to call attention to the struggle against police brutality and police killings, as well as disrupt the profit-garnering frenzies of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.” A call for actions from movement organizers in Ferguson urged people across the country to perform walkouts on Dec. 1. Using the hashtag #HandsUpWalkOut, the national announcement states: “Our momentum is building and this is just the beginning. Tomorrow [on Dec. 1] we urge you to join thousands of others and walk out of EVERYTHING — jobs, campuses, and schools — at 1:01 p.m. EST/10:01 a.m. PST, the time Mike Brown Jr. was gunned down by police officer Darren Wilson. Congregate with others, remember [the lives of those slain by police] and honor them by working to end state violence.”...

If you believe #BlackandBrownLivesMatter, then come to Union Square, Mon., Dec. 1st starting at 12 noon EST. Bring, signs, whistles, drums, instruments, pots and pans. The movement in Ferguson, MO has called for people across the country to walk out of their jobs, schools, and homes starting at 12 pm CST in outrage over the murder of #MikeBrown and hundreds of people of color murdered by the
police. This is especially important for us in NYC as we too wait for the grand
jury decision for the NYPD murder of #EricGarner to be announced any day now. NYC has lost countless Black and Brown people due to police murders including #SeanBell #KyamLivingston #ShantelDavis #KimaniGray #NicholasHeywardJr #RamarleyGraham and most recently #AkaiGurley just to name a few. We demand an END to "Broken Windows" policing and the NYPD occupation of our neighborhoods that terrorizes communities of color in NYC. We are asking student, worker & community groups to immediately discuss plans for Walkout contingents to converge in Union SQ. on the Southside at 17th Street for an action. More details to come!...

November 18 is the anniversary of the 1803 battle of Vertière, the
decisive battle of the Haitian revolution in which an army of former slaves
— most born in Africa — defeated the cream of the French army and
guaranteed Haiti’s independence....

Thirteen. That’s the average daily death toll in the Ukrainian
government’s war against the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics
since a ceasefire agreement was signed in early September, according to a Nov.
20 report by United Nations monitors. (BBC Nov. 21)...

Activists of the Union Borotba (Struggle) of Ukraine, living in exile in
Simferopol, Crimea, rallied in support of the people of Ferguson, Mo., and the
struggle against police brutality and racism in the United States on Nov. 27.
They were joined by members of the United Communist Party of Russia....

In light of the police murder of the martyr Michael Brown and the ongoing
struggle in Ferguson, Missouri, in the United States, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine salutes and stands firmly with the ongoing struggle of
Black people and all oppressed communities in the United States....

The disappearance and presumed murder of the 43 Mexican students of
Ayotzinapa exposed to the world the relation between drug cartels and the
violence of the state apparatus in capitalist Mexico. What is not publicized in
the corporate media is the U.S. role in corrupting and impoverishing Mexico
— and in causing the drug war that has taken 100,000 lives. Today, the
masses there are rising up in protest....

An economic and social crisis has struck the “Commonwealth,” a
euphemism that U.S. imperialism uses to disguise the colonial regime under
which it has dominated the island since 1898. The neoliberal policies that were
imposed starting from the 1980s, combined with the global economic crisis,
which has hit hard since 2008, has led Puerto Rico’s colonial regime to
an unsustainable situation that could explode at any moment....

Fifty people were arrested last night in Boston for attempting to shut down Interstate 93. Several were arrested in Providence, R.I., for helping to shut down I-95. Ferguson activists have called for a nationwide walkout from schools and work on Dec. 1....

Hundreds of people from across the country marched to the Stewart Detention Center in rural southwestern Georgia on Nov. 21, demanding the for-profit prison be shut down. Operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the medium security facility holds upwards of 1,900 immigrant detainees....

The 45th commemoration of the National Day of Mourning on Nov. 27 in Plymouth, Mass., will again honor Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, a heroic fighter for the rights of Indigenous and other oppressed peoples. Peltier has been unjustly imprisoned for 38 years....

President Barack Obama issued a long-awaited Executive Order on immigration policy on Nov. 20. That same day hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico took part in mass marches in solidarity with the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero....

The fighting members of Boston School Bus Drivers, Steelworkers Local 8751, and their supporters from the community, labor and the political movement staged a virtual occupation of the Dorchester [Mass.] District Court on Nov. 24 at the scene of the continuing anti-union frame-up trial of USW 8751 grievance chair and founder, Stevan Kirschbaum. People packed the courtroom and hallways, and picketed and rallied on the courthouse steps....

Domestic terrorism is not new in the United States. Following the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 freeing the enslaved Africans, and then the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction in 1865, the notorious hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed that same year. Since then, the KKK movement in the U.S. has been active in both the South and the North....

Members of the Ferguson and St. Louis, Mo., communities started gathering in front of the notorious Ferguson police station on Nov. 24, hours before the pro-cop state prosecutor, Bob McCullough, announced to the whole world the grand jury findings on whether a white police officer, Darren Wilson, would be indicted for killing an 18-year-old African-American youth, Michael Brown, on Aug. 9. Once McCullough stepped to the podium, 20 minutes late for an 8 p.m. start time, he made the predictable but still shocking announcement that there was no probable cause to view the killing of Brown as a crime. So therefore, another white cop was let off the hook for taking the life of a Black youth. It was revealed that Wilson shot 12 times at Brown and struck him at least six times....

When President Harry Truman sent U.S. troops to Korea in 1950, he called it a “police action.” He chose those words for a reason: It was the first time a U.S. president sent troops into war without congressional authorization. Calling it a “police action,” he and the military-industrial complex evaded the article of the Constitution that confers on Congress, not the president, the power to declare war....

A moment of truth approaches in Ferguson, in Missouri, in the United States. Two sides are mobilizing for the next step in the struggle for freedom from police and state repression for nationally oppressed peoples in the United States....

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class,
secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on
November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne
co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica,
after decades of illness....

>Attorneys representing political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal filed a lawsuit in federal court in Harrisburg, Pa., on Nov. 10 seeking to overturn a Pennsylvania censorship bill that had been quickly passed in October and then signed into law by outgoing Gov. Tom Corbett....

On Nov. 24, the Boston school bus drivers will gather at a courthouse to show support for grievance chair and union founder Steve Kirschbaum.

Kirschbaum will be on trial facing outrageous trumped-up charges — including felonious assault with a dangerous weapon — that are obviously being used by employer Veolia Corp. to try to bust the union....

President Barack Obama more than doubled U.S. participation in the new war on Iraq on Nov. 7 by ordering an additional 1,500 “advisers and trainers” be sent there. Washington’s pretext for this expansion is the need to train the Iraqi national army and the Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan to fight against Islamic State fighters....

With a demonstration that started at the entrance to the Great Hall of the University of California at San Diego on Nov. 5, people in southern California joined the hundreds of thousands of outraged people nationally and internationally who are demanding that 43 missing Mexican student activists be found and brought home alive....

After being buoyed by a string of victories, the movement for the right to marry was set back Nov. 6 when the Sixth District Court of Appeals upheld bans on same-sex marriage in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee....

Al-Awda New York is joining Students for Justice in Palestine from all over NYC in calling for an emergency action this Friday to demand that justice be served for Rasmea Odeh. She was found "guilty" this week for supposedly lying on her immigration papers, but really because she fights back against the injustices at the hands of the Israeli state. She experienced the injustices first hand when she was sexually tortured by Israeli soldiers and spent ten years in prison after being forced to sign a false confession....

Despite the overall grim results of the Nov. 4 midterm election, many workers have reason to celebrate. Ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage passed in Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota, and in the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, Calif....

The loss of the U.S. Senate to the Republican right and their gains in the Congress during the midterm 2014 elections can be largely attributed to a low voter turnout among key Democratic constituencies....

After much intense discussion among opposition parties, mass organizations and the religious leaders of Burkina Faso, it was announced on Nov. 10 that a roadmap was agreed upon for a transition to civilian rule — after mass protests had pushed out President Blaise Compaore. This consensus must now be negotiated with the military to set the terms of the transition....

Rasmea Odeh was found guilty of one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization today after a short deliberation by the jury in federal court here. Odeh and her supporters from around the country were awaiting the jury verdict since 8 a.m. There was anger but no surprise, since Judge Gershwin Drain had made numerous rulings that restricted Odeh’s defense attorneys from presenting almost their entire defense arguments and facts....

Minneapolis, Minn. — Over five thousand people joined eleven tribal nations in demanding Washington’s football franchise “change the name!” Gathering at Northrop Plaza at the University of Minnesota, over 3,000 people marched and converged on the stadium two hours before the game and were joined by 2,000 others who marched from the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis....

On Nov. 2, against the backdrop of the U.S. and NATO’s provocative “Iron Sword” war games in nearby Lithuania, residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DNR and LC) went to the polls for the first elections since declaring independence from Ukraine....

Excerpts from solidarity statements received by the International Action Center on the six-month anniversary of the massacre in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014. The complete statements are available at No2Nato.org.

From Alexei Albu, massacre survivor, Odessa Regional Council deputy and member of Union Borotba (Struggle), now living in exile...

Some people thought that so-called European integration would bring Western living standards to Ukraine. But to see reality, we need to look at the situation in Greece. The EU doesn’t bring high living standards, but a regime of austerity to cut social spending by the state....

Rasmea’s supporters packed the courtroom in anticipation of her taking
the stand, but the day began first with the continued testimony and cross
examination of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Agent Douglas
Scott Pierce. Under cross by defense attorney Jim Fennerty, Pierce revealed
that in a previous case, he had testified that the questions on the
naturalization forms can be “confusing,” especially for those who
do not have fluency in the English language, and also acknowledged that older
forms previously asked specifically about crimes, arrests, imprisonment, etc.,
“inside or outside the United States.”
...

We are in the midst of a deepening capitalist global crisis, which has
unleashed imperialist war on Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Africa and the world, and
militarized racist police terror here at home. It has brought about the
widespread impoverishment of the working class and oppressed peoples, many of them migrants and women, on a worldwide basis.
...

Lennon Lacy did not hang himself; he was lynched! He did not commit suicide; he was murdered! Capturing the correct language is so critical in this case, which is probably why mainstream media have refused to cover it. The correct language reflects a history the U.S. would rather not share, while “lynching” is a word most Black folk would rather forget. The harsh reality is that Lennon Lacy, a 17-year-old Black kid from North Carolina was lynched just two months ago....

Cuban health care workers have played a leading role on the African continent for decades. The revolutionary government views its work in the fight against the Ebola Virus Disease as a manifestation of internationalism and solidarity with Africa....

An Ebola Summit held here at the Berta Dreyfus Public School 49 on Oct. 25 brought together a diverse group of people representing health care, civil rights, cultural performers, immigrants, city agencies, advocates and those in the community impacted by the Ebola virus disease (EVD). The meeting was co-sponsored by Councilperson Debi Rose and Togba Porte, chair of the African Ebola Crisis Committee. Some 30,000 West African immigrants from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea live in an area of Staten Island known as “Little Africa.”...

In a rare note of agreement, the Wall Street Journal and Novosti, a Russian newspaper, agree on the large size of a workers’ anti-austerity demonstration: 1 million. That is the number of Italian workers who marched to the Piazza San Giovanni in Rome on Oct. 25 to protest a new labor law rammed through the legislature on Oct. 9 by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi....

A global day of protest on Oct. 23 demanded the return — alive — of 43 Mexican student activists missing since Sept. 26. While many large demonstrations occurred in cities around the world, the biggest was in the Zócalo central plaza of Mexico City, where estimates of the crowd ran as high as half a million....

Health care workers must identify those with the virus, isolate them and
monitor everybody who was exposed. This is the only way to break the chain of
infection. But, with the exception of Nigeria, the overwhelming number of cases
of Ebola in West Africa have made it impossible for health care workers to
follow up with all those exposed to the virus....

Judge Gershwin Drain handed down a series of outrageous and unjust
decisions, Oct 27–28, in the case of revered Palestinian American leader Rasmea Odeh. The government is going all out to railroad Rasmea to jail and deport her. There was nothing fair about her being indicted on trumped up immigration charges in the first place. The recent rulings by Judge Drain indicate that there will be nothing fair about Rasmea’s trial either....

Before the Maidan coup, Ukraine was a
country without a significant army. Ukraine did not have any real enemies
around, so our ruling class only established a police apparatus. The army was
something that issued decrees and was used for corruption. Ukrainian military
pilots didn’t even have enough hours in the sky to really be pilots....

At the initiative of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, on Oct. 20
heads of state from the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our
Americas—Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), along with health
agencies and professionals, representatives of the United Nations, the
Pan-American Health Organization and the Organization of East Caribbean States,
met in Havana to chart an action plan to help confront the Ebola epidemic in
Africa and prevent its expansion to other regions....

World Health Organization officials announced on Oct. 24 that the number of
Ebola virus disease cases now exceeds 10,000. Most people have come down with
the disease in three West African states: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia,
where approximately 4,900 people have died....

Odessa Regional Council Deputy Alexei Albu, a
member of the Union Borotba (Struggle) of Ukraine, was a leader of the
city’s AntiMaidan movement against the U.S.-backed coup. Albu survived
the May 2 massacre, when at least 48 people were killed by neo-Nazi gangs at
the House of Trade Unions. Albu and his family were forced to flee to Crimea,
where he continues his work as a co-founder of the Committee for the Liberation
of Odessa and the investigative website 2May.org. ...

The grievance chair and founder of the Boston School Bus Drivers’
Union will be in court on Nov. 24, facing trumped-up charges brought by the
Boston-area district attorney’s office on behalf of notorious
union-buster Veolia Corporation....

Epidemiology nurse Kaci Hickox had traveled to Sierra Leone
on behalf of Doctors Without Borders to help treat patients suffering from
Ebola virus disease. Upon returning to the U.S. Oct. 24, Hickox was placed
under quarantine. She reported no symptoms of the dreaded disease. [She was
released from quarantine after much criticism of the policy and is home to
Maine....

We are deeply saddened by the murder of Jennifer Laude, a 26-year old
transgender woman from the Philippines, and express our deepest condolences to
Jennifer’s family and friends. On October 11, Jennifer was found
strangled to death in a hotel room in Olongapo City, Philippines. An autopsy
report has shown the cause of death as “asphyxia by drowning.” The
suspected murderer, U.S. Marine Corp PFC Joseph Scott Pemberton, is currently
being held in detention aboard the USS Peleliu warship in Subic Bay.
...

A memorial meeting for Andy Stapp, who died in September, will be held on Nov. 1 in New York. As an active-duty GI at Fort Sill, Okla., Stapp first attracted the ire of the Army brass in 1967 when he was court-martialed for “refusing an order” — the order to surrender his anti-war literature to the military authorities....

Philadelphia — At a time when more and more convictions are being reversed and prisoners released because of improper, racist and even criminal actions by prosecuting attorneys, some of it exposed through DNA evidence, the state of Pennsylvania is rushing through a gag order to keep prisoners from being able to speak out to the public, especially when the prisoners are political, like Mumia Abu-Jamal....

Simferopol, Crimea — On Sept. 22, Workers
World conducted an extensive interview with Victor Shapinov, a coordinator and
leading theoretician of the Marxist organization Union Borotba (Struggle) of
Ukraine. Shapinov currently lives in exile with other Borotba activists in
Crimea, under threat of arrest from the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev.
Additional installments of the interview will appear in coming weeks....

It is impossible to ignore that the capitalist for-profit system is the greatest obstacle in the effort to control the Ebola epidemic. Capitalism has sown abject poverty and malnutrition, dismantled existing public health systems, crushed human solidarity, based the development of vaccines and cures on their profit margin and weakened human ability to survive diseases....

everal United States congressional representatives have called for a ban on travel into the U.S. from the three West African states which have been the most severely impacted by the recent Ebola Virus Disease outbreak. These proposals demanded that President Barack Obama prohibit travelers from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia from entering the U.S....

Lots of media were on hand today in Philadelphia to record the moment when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett put his signature on the “Revictimization Relief Act” — dubbed the “Silence Mumia Law” by civil rights activists. But Corbett had a problem: None of the media could hear him speak. Nearly 50 protesters, standing a short distance away from Corbett’s press conference at 13th and Locust streets, drowned him out with constant chants of “Our brother Mumia is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” and “One term Tom!”...

Simferopol, Crimea — On Sept. 22, Workers World conducted an
extensive interview with Victor Shapinov, a coordinator and leading
theoretician of the Marxist organization Union Borotba (Struggle) of Ukraine.
Shapinov currently lives in exile with other Borotba activists in Crimea, under
threat of arrest from the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev. Additional
installments of the interview will appear in coming weeks....

On October 22, 2013 the Department of Homeland Security arrested Palestinian-American feminist, activist, educator and community leader, Rasmea Odeh in her home for alleged immigration fraud as part of an ongoing witch-hunt that targets Arabs and Muslims who criticize U.S. and Israeli policy and labels them “terrorists.”...

Historic Riverside Church in New York City was the location for the send-off on Oct. 10 of the “National Caravan in Solidarity with the Children and Families at the Mexico and Texas Borders.” The enthusiastic crowd of nearly 100 supporters cheered on caravan organizers and participants, jumping to their feet several times during the program....

The Turkish government decided Oct. 12 to permit U.S. fighter-bombers to launch attacks on Syrian targets from Incirlik Air Force Base near the Turkish-Syrian border. This decision marked the latest escalation of the U.S.-led “war on ISIS.” It is a further step toward a major U.S. invasion into Syria and Iraq....

An unprecedented weekend of mass resistance took place in St. Louis, Ferguson, Clayton and other parts of Missouri on Oct. 10-13. Many actions demanded an end to police terror and for real justice for Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Vonderrit Myers Jr. and countless others who have lost their young lives at the hands of the police....

Activists with disabilities and allies from New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts gathered at an 1199 Service Employees union hall in Dorchester, Mass., in August to commemorate people with disabilities whose collective struggle led to the Americans with Disabilities Act being signed into law on July 26, 1990....

More often than not college commencement speakers are corporate CEOs, bankers or politicians — the people who will exercise control over students’ futures by exploiting their labor, piling mountains of student loan debt on them or starting endless wars that threaten the very futures of them and their families....

Justice was finally served on Oct. 1 when a Florida jury convicted Michael Dunn of the first-degree murder of Jordan Davis, 17. The unarmed African-­American youth was fatally shot by Dunn in November 2012....

In evaluating an emerging movement it is important to look at what political forces are supporting the movement. What are the demands raised by the movement, who are they appealing to, and what is the social composition of those in motion?...

Venezuela is in the midst of the difficult task of constructing the path to
socialism. Like any living process, it does not go forward in a straight line.
It instead has advances and setbacks, mistakes and corrections. The important
thing is the continuous effort of the people in propelling the construction of
a fair system to once and for all supplant the violent capitalism still
prevalent in Venezuela....

A special session at the 69th U.N. General Assembly
discussed the spread of the Ebola virus in several West African states on Sept.
25. African Union Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan spoke on the worsening crisis and the need for assistance from the international community to effectively address the burgeoning impact of the disease, which has killed more than 3,100 people since March....

Eight experts and journalists visiting the West African state of Guinea were found dead in Nzerekore on Sept. 20. They went there to educate about preventing the spread of Ebola. Reports from Guinea say the delegation met with community elders, then was later attacked by youths....

Recent revelations about athletes and domestic abuse imply that these horrific acts are particular to sports culture in the United States. This is not so. This phenomenon stems from the oppression of women in class society, which exists side by side with racism, worker exploitation and other forms of inequality and discrimination....

Activists in over 2,808 cities in 166 countries participated on Sept. 21 in the first international Peoples Climate March. The events took place two days before more than 120 world leaders will convene for the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City on Sept. 23 to plan for a new global climate treaty in 2015....

Some 43 members of an elite Israeli Defense Force intelligence unit, many still on active duty, sent an open letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sept. 12, in which they refuse to spy on the Palestinian people. It states:...

Early in September, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he had carried out a targeted assassination of the leader of the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance organization in Somalia. The group has been fighting against the Somali government and a regional military force for over six years....

Join with the International Action Center, UNAC (United National Anti-War Coalition), ALBA (The Bolivian Alliance for the People of Our America), the Peoples Power Assembly, May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, International League for Peoples Struggle, the Free Palestine bloc and many other progressive organizations for an anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, anti-war, peace & justice contingent in the Climate Change March....

The National Football League’s Baltimore Ravens’ running back, Ray Rice, has been indefinitely suspended from the NFL, and then cut by his team as of Sept. 8 due to a February domestic violence incident involving his then fiancee Janay Palmer....

President Barack Obama announced Sept.10 that the U.S. military would build an international coalition to make “war on the Islamic State.” He said there were already 10 countries in this coalition. Administration spokespeople on the Sept. 14 Sunday morning talk shows said they were still building the coalition. The next morning a conference of 30 countries opened in Paris on this theme....

The foreclosure crisis has had a negative impact on the people of the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., the epicenter of a rebellion for justice springing from the shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, at the hands of cop Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.
...

A ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk, Belarus, on Sept. 5, under the auspices of the Trilateral Contact Group, went into effect at 6 p.m. local time. The parties to the agreement were the governments of Ukraine and the Russian Federation and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe....

The scene could have been scripted by Hollywood, except this time the prison guards and cops were certainly not the heroes. In the late night hours of Labor Day, Sept. 1, during a guard shift change, 32 young men, Black, Brown and white, broke through the walls of their dorms and slipped out underneath the fence of the Woodland Youth Development Center, a state-run youth prison in Nashville, Tenn. Since then, all but six of the youth have been apprehended....

In Liberia, where many people have been killed by the Ebola virus, nurses and physicians went on strike on Sept. 1, 2 and 4 due to lack of pay and the dangers they face due to the minimal resources available to address the burgeoning health care disaster....

Imperialist heads of state at the Sept. 4-5 NATO Summit in Newport, Wales, met under U.S. pressure to escalate their anti-Russia maneuvers regarding Ukraine, to schedule their gradual exit from Afghanistan and to open war on the Islamic State....

Thousands of fast food workers fighting for a $15 hourly wage and union protection walked off their jobs on Sept. 4 in more than 150 U.S. cities. Some 465 workers and their supporters were arrested during the one-day strike for engaging in acts of civil disobedience, blocking streets around McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and other fast food chains....

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Sept. 3 that it will conduct a civil rights investigation beginning Sept. 4 into the Ferguson, Mo., police department in the wake of the Aug. 9 police murder of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. As he held his hands up to surrender, Brown was shot at least six times and killed by Darren Wilson, a white cop....

The “crime” of walking while Black — and driving, shopping, sitting, standing and merely existing while Black — in the United States is often punishable by death. This means death by police bullets from cops trained to shoot and kill....

Imperialist heads of state at the Sept. 4-5 NATO Summit in Newport, Wales, met under U.S. pressure to escalate their anti-Russia maneuvers regarding Ukraine, to schedule their gradual exit from Afghanistan and to open war on the Islamic State....

The peoplesclimate.org blog states that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
is “urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to
dramatically reduce global warming pollution.” However, the website
realistically admits that the summit won’t necessarily solve the crisis,
but that “organizing, mobilizing and building social movements are
ultimately what change the course of history.”...

Preparations are underway for an evening of “Love and Resistance for
Imam Jamil Al-Amin,” on Sept. 12 in New York City. Al-Amin, formerly
known as H. Rap Brown, is suffering from serious illnesses and is currently
being held at the Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina....

A dramatic exhibit of 40 photos by Russian and Ukrainian journalists showcasing the destruction and human suffering caused by the U.S.-backed war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region opens in New York City on Thursday, Sept. 4....

The Summit of Heads of State and Government of the 28 states of NATO opens today in Newport, Wales, where these leaders will take key decisions “to ensure NATO is prepared to address current and future security challenges” that they attribute to “military aggression of Russia against Ukraine” and “growth of extremism and sectarian conflict in the Middle East and North Africa.” In this “crucial” summit, the United States, which retains the undisputed leadership in NATO, and its European allies will mobilize simultaneously on two war fronts. (Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s press conference)...

Thousands of anti-war marchers descended on Newport, Wales, on Aug. 30 for the beginning of a week of protests against the NATO Summit scheduled there for Sept. 4 and 5. Organizers have said they expect 20,000 people in the Welsh city by Sept. 4....

After a difficult summer when their very existence seemed to hang by a thread, the Union of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, also known as Novorossia, demolished Ukraine’s military blockade against its capital cities in late August....

Beware the fickle nature of imperialist propaganda. The political line of the corporate media is apt to flip-flop. Consider the latest revelations in late August that up to 1,000 volunteers from Western countries, including some from the United States, have been fighting in Syria against its government. Most of these volunteers are fighting within military units of the group now known as the Islamic State....

There is an elephant in the climate debate that by U.S. demand cannot be discussed or even acknowledged. This agreement to ignore the elephant is now the accepted basis of all international negotiations on climate change....

Israel’s failure to divide, disarm or defeat the heroic resistance in Gaza is seen by all currents of the Palestinian liberation movement as their historic political victory. This is the overwhelming Palestinian sentiment....

The call for justice continues not only in Ferguson, Mo., but around the United States since the Aug. 9 brutal murder of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old African American who was shot in broad daylight by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Not since the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion has there been another one like the one that erupted in Ferguson on Aug. 10 and lasted for over a week. And never before has so much national and international scrutiny been paid towards the racist scourge of police terror inside the U.S....

Protests in solidarity with the people of Ferguson, Mo., in response to the police murder of African-American youth Michael Brown continued in cities across the U.S. for a second week. Demonstrators echoed common demands for an end to racism, for justice for all victims of police brutality, and for charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fired six bullets killing the unarmed teenager on Aug. 9....

Each day the Barack Obama administration draws closer to escalating U.S. military intervention in Iraq and extending it to Syria. Already having bombed Iraq for the first time since 2011, the Pentagon admits to sending surveillance drones into Syrian airspace. At the same time Washington and its imperialist allies are pouring weapons into the Iraqi regional Kurdish government in Erbil and, now that Nuri al-Maliki has resigned his post as prime minister under pressure from Washington, into the new pro-West regime in Baghdad....

The action to stop the Israeli ship Zim from unloading at the Port of Oakland, initially planned as a one-day event, became a movement. Originally organized by Block the Boat for Gaza, a coalition of about 70 organizations led by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, the Aug. 16 action kept growing with its success. Supported and encouraged by the initial organizers, the movement included independent activists and, most significantly, the ranks of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union....

At least 15,000 people demonstrated in Staten Island, N.Y., on Aug. 23, demanding justice for Eric Garner, an African American, slain on July 17 by New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo. A video of Pantaleo applying a chokehold to Garner, killing him, has been widely disseminated, and been seen by millions of people worldwide....

Many thousands of people, the majority of them standing outside the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, gathered here in solidarity today to comfort the family of Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by a Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9....

Michael Brown was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9 while he walked through the streets of his neighborhood. His brutal death from six gunshot wounds fired at close range sparked immediate mass demonstrations in Ferguson that have continued for over two weeks. The protests and rebellion in Ferguson highlight the growing intolerance for police repression among African-American working-class youth. In response to the unrest in this suburb outside St. Louis, tens of thousands more have gathered in solidarity in cities across the U.S. Police and government responses to the demonstrations in Ferguson are designed to violently suppress dissent. Military equipment and law-enforcement deployment tactics used in this majority African-American town of 21,000 resembled those utilized in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine and other regions of the world where U.S. imperialism is seeking directly or indirectly to oppress and exploit the people....

Anti-racists from all over the world fighting against police brutality have expressed their solidarity with the embattled African-American community of Ferguson. Many have come to Ferguson since cop Darren Wilson gunned down 18-year-old, unarmed Michael Brown on Aug. 8....

This Aug. 14 message, posted at cwa-union.org, is from Claude Cummings, Communication Workers of America vice president of District 6 and Executive Board Diversity Committee chair of the same union....

The situation in Ferguson is by no means an isolated incident. Since the time of slavery, Africans have resisted national oppression, racist violence and economic exploitation. To even suggest that the oppressed and the oppressor have equal responsibility in a situation that was clearly provoked by the police, the authorities in St. Louis County and the state of Missouri is disingenuous, to say the least....

For four days straight the San Francisco Bay Area community blocked the Israeli ZIM ship from unloading at the Port of Oakland. And today, we salute the rank and file of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union for standing with us against Israeli apartheid by honoring our pickets and letting the ship go from the SSA terminal this afternoon!...

Vigils and demonstrations involving thousands took place the evening of Thursday, Aug. 14, in at least 90 cities across the United States to protest the police killing of Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Mo. Organized quickly on social media, the somber and angry gatherings included a moment of silence for Brown at 7:20 p.m. Eastern time. Other demonstrations against the racist killing and in solidarity with the ongoing rebellion of the African-American community in Ferguson have taken place before and since....

Atlanta — The crowd had been organized by college and high school students. Estimated by the Atlanta police at 5,000, they gathered at CNN on Aug. 18 to denounce its scurrilous news coverage of the killing of Mike Brown by a Ferguson cop — with sensationalized images of “violent” protesters in the face of heavily militarized police forces and repeated character assassination of the dead youth....

The great struggle for justice by the African-American people of Ferguson, Mo., comes after a white cop there gunned down young Michael Brown. Witnesses say the 18-year-old was unarmed and calling “Don’t shoot” with his hands in the air when officer Darren Wilson repeatedly shot and killed him....

A Wayne County jury on Aug. 7 found Theodore Wafer, 55, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., a Detroit suburb, guilty on all charges, including second-degree murder, in the death of 19-year-old ­African- American Renisha McBride. Wafer could face up to life in prison after a sentencing hearing scheduled for Aug. 25....

The grim news that police have
killed yet another unarmed African-American youth comes this time from
Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. Michael Brown, just 18, had expected to
enter college in a few weeks. Police have not yet come up with any explanation
for why officers riddled Brown’s body with 10 bullets after stopping him
as he walked with a friend to his grandmother’s house. Nor has the
Ferguson Police Department even released the name of the killer cop, who has
been put on “administrative leave.”...

President Barack Obama has now become the fourth successive U.S. president to order the bombing of Iraq, this time with a “humanitarian” pretext. But it soon became clear that Obama’s “humanitarian” excuse was as much a lie as the pretexts raised by the other three U.S. presidents and that the bombing was aimed at defending U.S. imperialism’s corporate and strategic interests....

As tens of thousands today marched for Gaza worldwide from Dublin to
Caracas to Washington, over 10,000 protesters in New York City, the
world center of finance capital, marched to protest Israel’s attack on
Gaza...

The militant nationalist sentiments of supporters of the
“Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO) have always been combined with
expectations that the most difficult work for the Kiev government will be done
by the West. At first it was thought that the European Union and the
International Monetary Fund would pay for European integration, offsetting
economic losses from the introduction of new standards. Ukrainians were then
told that the IMF would provide money to “stabilize” the
economy....

Some of the fiercest attacks on Gaza have been Israeli attacks on the
Egyptian-Gaza border crossing at Rafah. More than 100 Palestinians were killed
in Rafah between Aug. 1 and 3, including 10 children at a well-marked
school...

I was a member of the Israeli military from 1972 to 1975 and took part in
the illegal Zionist occupations of Palestine, Egypt and Syria as well as the
1973 Arab-Israeli War. I have witnessed firsthand the steadfastness and
resistance of the Palestinian people along with their allies from other Arab
communities....

While spokespersons for the U.S. government cynically condemned the July 29
Israeli shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza that was being used to
shelter 3,300 civilians, the Pentagon opened up the doors to a U.S. secret
cache of weapons and ammunition to Israel to resupply its dwindling stock. The
shelling killed at least 16 Palestinians, including many children....

A class-action lawsuit was filed on July 21 in federal bankruptcy court
involving victims of the mass water shutoffs and four community organizations:
Moratorium NOW! Coalition, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, People’s Water Board and the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network. The lawsuit demands a moratorium on shutoffs; that all those shut off be reconnected immediately; that an affordable plan be enacted where residents cannot be charged more than 2 percent of their income; and that money paid to the banks for usurious interest rate swaps be used to help pay off residents’ arrears....

The attempt by the city of Boston to impose a racist austerity regime on its schools involves Veolia Corporation’s attempt to rip up the school bus drivers’ union contract. This includes the illegal lockout of union members last October, the firing of four of its leaders and now the frame-up charges against grievance chair and union founder Stevan Kirschbaum. The immigrant workers’ local, mainly Haitian and Cape Verdean but also African American, is highly mobilized and fighting back fiercely. So much so that even the Boston media had to admit that the union turned Kirschbaum’s July 14 arraignment into a protest that took over the chambers and steps of the Dorchester courthouse....

Hezbollah General Secretary Sayed Hassan Nasrallah made a major speech on al-Quds Day, July 25, in Beirut, Lebanon. The IAC is publishing lightly edited excerpts from an unofficial transcription and translation made in Lebanon. It focuses on Nasrallah’s evaluation of the fighting in Gaza as a failure for Israel and a victory for the resistance and also on his call to all Arabs and Arab governments, whatever other disagreements they may have, to come together to support the people of Gaza....

Efforts by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to carry out the program of restructuring in favor of the banks and corporations during the city’s bankruptcy proceedings have drawn growing opposition from inside Detroit and beyond....

Israel’s brutal assault on the people of Gaza, targeting mostly children and civilians while destroying hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and mosques, has been built and paid for by the US. On July 18, every US Senator voted unanimously to support Israel’s attacks and increase funding to the Israeli army, now over $3.5 billion yearly. US and Israel’s goal is clear, defeat the Palestinians and weaken Gaza’s elected leadership, Hamas. Yet the Palestinian people, strengthened by a massive worldwide solidarity movement, have continued to fight back....

Protests on and around Al-Quds Day, the last Friday of Ramadan on July 25, took place in a number of U.S. cities. Some demonstrators linked the war on children in Gaza to the attacks on children from Central America who are crossing the U.S./Mexican border to seek refuge. Here are descriptions of some of the protests in support of the people of Gaza and against the U.S.-backed Israeli military machine....

Against the illuminating backdrop of the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, there exists disturbing parallels between the cowardly New York Police Department’s racist killing of Eric Garner and the on-going, genocidal assault against the heroic Palestinian people by the Zionist garrison state of Israel. These parallels are fervently anchored in the ideology of exceptionalism, imperial expansion and white supremacy. They go to the very heart of how the United States developed into an unprecedented empire, along with the creation of Israel as an extension to that end....

The crimes are staggering, the destruction massive. Israel is creating a 3-kilometer strip of scorched earth around Gaza City that eats up about 44 percent of the Gaza Strip, already the most densely populated place on earth. (U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)...

Currently, it is extremely difficult for leftist forces opposing fascism in Ukraine to work in the territory controlled by the Kiev government, in particular for the most active left organization -- Union Borotba (Struggle). In the cities of the southeast, there were mass arrests of AntiMaidan supporters, and today hundreds of people are behind bars. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) now searches and arrests our comrades even for simply posting on social networks (Facebook, Vkontakte), which is classified as “separatist” propaganda....

In the aftermath of the horrific crash of a Malaysian Airlines civilian jet that killed 298 people on July 18 in the war zone of eastern Ukraine, the governments of the United States and European Union are cynically trying to exploit the incident for their own imperialist gains....

The International Working Women's Coalition, which for the past 10 years has commemorated International Working Women's Day in New York City, stands with the world's working and oppressed peoples in solidarity with the heroic people of Gaza who are resisting the heinous atrocities by the fascistic, Zionist regime, especially the Israeli Defense Forces....

Ziyad Yaghi is a Palestinian American and a political prisoner. Represented by a court-appointed attorney, this young North Carolina man was convicted of a conspiracy to provide material support to an unknown terrorist group, at an unknown time in an unspecified place....

Often the corporate media use the term “international community” to give weight to an opinion that is really the opinion of a handful of imperialist heads of state — from the U.S., its major NATO allies and Japan. Since the Israeli assault on Gaza began, the real international community is coming out into the streets, sometimes defying police violence, to show its solidarity with Gaza and Palestine and protest....

As people of conscience around the world condemn the genocidal Israeli invasion of Gaza, protesters inside the U.S. are among those raising their voices for an immediate end to the Zionist war offensive. Many are well aware of — and angry about — the fact that U.S. taxpayer dollars fund Israel’s weapons of mass destruction and that the U.S.-backed policy toward the Palestinians is what spurs on the terrorist actions of the racist Israeli apartheid state.

Israel’s horrific assault on the people of Gaza is in its 14th day. Just today, Tel Aviv’s used its U.S.-supplied arsenal to hit five mosques and a hospital intensive care unit in Deir al-Balah, killing at least five people, including doctors, and wounding at least 70, including 30 medics....

The Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing July 15 about the Women’s Health Protection Act. The law is needed to stop states from implementing laws claiming to protect women’s health and safety, but which limit access to legal, safe abortion and drive women’s health care providers out of business....

A civilian passenger plane is rerouted over a war zone. The plane crashes mysteriously in rebel-held territory. Within hours, the rebels and an “enemy” government are blamed for deliberately downing the plane and killing everyone aboard....

Undoubtedly, the Malaysian Boeing disaster is an event that may have long-lasting political consequences – and not only for Ukraine. The tragic deaths of innocent people stirred up public opinion in Ukraine and worldwide. In the first minutes after the incident, all parties were quick to accuse their opponents of the destruction of the airliner. But, unfortunately, the circumstances of the tragedy and the information we have available leave more questions than answers....

The Detroit Water & Sewerage Department announced at a federal bankruptcy court hearing before Judge Steven Rhodes today that there would be a 15-day suspension of water shutoffs while policies were enacted to address the current crisis in the city. Additional measures are purportedly being designed to address the massive termination of water services for thousands of households in this economically distressed majority African-American city....

A dog and pony show put on by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Detroit municipal bankruptcy proceedings took an unexpected turn on July 15 when Moratorium NOW! Coalition activist Kris Hamel told the judge he needed to put a moratorium on mass water shutoffs and ameliorate the suffering of the poorest Detroiters....

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress and its allies have expressed outrage over Israel’s attacks on Gaza. ANC Deputy Secretary General Jesse Duarte re-emphasized its position in the July 11-17 issue of ANC Today....

People from all around the world and some governments have rallied to the side of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who are under relentless attack from the U.S.-armed Israeli state. Here is a small sample of what has been taking place worldwide....

Massive water shutoffs have drawn attention to the humanitarian crisis in the city of Detroit. Even though the United Nations commission dealing with water resources and access to potable water has condemned the conditions prevailing in the majority African-American municipality, the main response to the documentation of gross human rights violations has been a public relations campaign to distribute bottled water....

The city of Boston and the Veolia Corporation have responded to the Boston school bus drivers’ union show of strength at its June 30th Solidarity Day III demonstration with an outrageous set of trumped-up charges against one of the union leaders: driver and union founder Stevan Kirschbaum. In 2013, Veolia’s firing of four leaders of United Steelworkers Local 8751 — Andre Francois, Steve Gillis, Garry Murchison and Kirschbaum — was accompanied by a corporate media campaign attacking the union. That campaign — starting with a lockout by Veolia that the media falsely called a strike — was meant to isolate the union and pave the way for the outrageous gutting of the union contract, which the company is now attempting at the bargaining table....

The International Action Center demands along with many others the long-overdue freedom for Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), who is currently housed at the U.S. Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo....

San Francisco — A coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer groups held a protest on the theme “Prison Breaks, Not Prison Parties” on June 28 during Pride weekend here. It was meant to shame the website kink.com for holding a “Prison of Love Pride Party.” Participants had been invited to “get arrested and enjoy solitary confinement.”...

July 1 — Early this morning, the Israeli authorities used the death of
three Israeli teenagers as the pretext to begin a major assault on Palestinian
organizations and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza. Every voice should be
raised against this assault....

On July 3, 2014, four plain clothes BPD detectives paid two visits to brother Kirschbaum's home while he was at the Boston Teachers Union in contract negotiations with Veolia Transportation, Inc. Lieutenant Detective Thomas Hopkins served Steve's daughter, Hannah, with his Summons to appear on July 14, 2014, at 8:30 am at BMC Dorchester Court, 510 Washington Street, Dorchester MA 02124. The summons says Steve is to be arraigned on charges of Assault and Battery with a dangerous Weapon, Trespass, Breaking and Entering during the Daytime to Commit a Felony, and Malicious Destruction of Property. These false, defamatory, and outrageous charges are identified as "offenses"alleged to have occurred on June 30th at the Solidarity Day rallies and march....

Under the banner of “Moral Freedom Summer” — drawing on the 50th anniversary of “Freedom Summer” in 1964 — the North Carolina NAACP announced at the final Moral Monday in Raleigh on June 23 plans to “turn mass mobilization into mass organization.” While much of the effort will be focused on voter registration, young organizers in counties across the state will be engaged in a number of organizing initiatives aimed at deepening the unity built between struggles by the Moral Monday movement and engaging more people in the broader fightback....

On June 19, 2014, twelve years after the filing of a lawsuit by the Central Park 5 — five innocent Black and Latino teenage boys who in April 1989 were arrested, interrogated for hours without an attorney, coerced into confessing, tried, convicted and imprisoned for a crime they never committed — New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio officially settled the lawsuit in their favor, awarding them $40 million....

Victor Shapinov of the Marxist organization Union Borotba (Struggle) analyzes the forces at work behind President Petro Poroshenko’s announcement officially ending the Kiev junta’s ceasefire with the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics of the Donbass region. The article originally appeared on the website ActualComment.ru and was translated by Greg Butterfield....

Human rights activists marched from the New York Times offices to the Empire State Building — which houses Human Rights Watch — to protest both institutions as tools of the CIA, specifically in their role attacking the Bolivarian government of Venezuela....

The Supreme Court has done it again. It bestowed new rights on corporations. All a corporation has to do these days is plead for a new interpretation of a law and — abracadabra — the court waves its magic wand over the issue and the wish is granted....

The International Working Women’s Day Coalition has called a protest today in Union Square, 5-6:30, to denounce today’s Supreme Court 5-4 decision giving for-profit corporations the right to deny women workers the right to choose contraceptives of their choice....

When Secretary of State John Kerry met on June 22 with Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the coup leader who now claims the presidency of Egypt, he proclaimed that things are now “normal” in Egypt so that el-Sisi can receive the official blessings of the U.S. government. This means the U.S. will continue to bankroll the Egyptian military to the immediate tune of $575 million, money that had been “frozen,” with lots more to come. It didn’t matter to Kerry or his masters in the U.S. ruling class that another 183 people, most of them in the Muslim Brotherhood, just received a mass death sentence from the regime....

At his Escambia County polling site on June 3, 93-year-old African-American Willie Mims was disenfranchised by Alabama’s strict new voter ID law. Mims was turned away because he did not have a photo ID....

The royalty of Wall Street and the leaders of the global corporate establishment will be attending THE WORLD BUSINESS FORUM (WBF). Paying two thousand dollars per seat, The WBF, the biggest of all the meetings of the 1%, will bring some 5000 chief executive officers, and heads of the fortune 500 corporations and banks to Radio City Music Hall on Oct. 7 and 8.
...

The Veolia Corporation’s campaign to break the Boston School Bus Drivers Union and rip up their contract is part of a broader austerity attack that targets the unions, public education and Boston’s African-American, Latino/a and immigrant communities....

The following June 11 letter was sent out to the labor movement and signed by Myles Calvey, business manager, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2222; Rich Rogers, executive secretary-treasurer, Greater Boston Labor Council; Dumond Lewis, president, United Steelworkers Local 8751; Steven A. Tolman, president, Massachusetts State AFL-CIO; Andrew Slip, staff rep., District 4 USW; and John E. Shinn, director, District 4 USW....

An official United Nations press conference featuring five U.S. observers of the June 3 Syrian presidential elections was held on June 18. The briefing, held at the U.N. headquarters here, featured Joe Iosbaker of the Anti-war Committee — Chicago; Paul Larudee of the Syria Solidarity Movement; blogger Jane Stillwater; Judy Bello, founder of the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars; and Scott Williams of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together and the International Action Center. These activists joined a distinguished group of observers from 32 countries who visited polling places across Syria....

For the past eight months, the union has been resisting a major austerity assault by Veolia, a French based, multinational, union-busting company. The drivers were illegally locked out, and then four of their leaders were fired. Now the fired leaders have exhausted their unemployment benefits, and Veolia and the city of Boston have given 100 summer jobs to nonunion companies. Meanwhile, the bus drivers’ contract with Veolia expires on June 30 and with it, the no strike clause....

The May 21 New York Times editorialized that 40 U.S. veterans died while waiting for health care at U.S. Veterans Administration hospitals and medical centers. In Phoenix, Ariz., more than 1,300 veterans were told they were getting appointments, but were never notified of them....

On June 5, the United Auto Workers — a union founded in 1935 in a period of tumultuous class struggle — concluded its 36th Constitutional Convention in Detroit. The convention marked the departure of President Bob King, a champion of “partnership” with Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. The acceptance speech of Dennis Williams, the new president who had been secretary-treasurer, took on a more militant tone....

An anti-war protest by 100 women shut down the Chernivtsi-Zhitomir highway near the town of Mahala in western Ukraine on June 19. The women — mothers of Ukrainian soldiers — demanded that the government in Kiev withdraw their sons from the fratricidal war to suppress the anti-fascist uprising in southeastern Ukraine. (Depo.ua)

A day earlier, hundreds of miles to the east, in the capital of the Donetsk People’s Republic, thousands of mineworkers and their families marched to demand an end to the junta’s “anti-terrorist operation.” Workers from 16 regional mines downed tools to join the protest....

Iraq’s disaster has moved back onto the front burner of world attention. As of June 15, the Barack Obama administration is considering air strikes in the country the Pentagon finally left in 2011 after eight years of occupation....

The downing of a Ukrainian military airplane in the Lugansk People’s Republic sent shockwaves around the world June 14. The plane carried troops destined to fight in the Kiev junta’s war against the people in the country’s rebellious Donbass region. All 49 people aboard were killed, including the 9-person crew....

With the outbreak of fighting from Mosul to Tikrit putting Iraq back onto the front burner of world media coverage and with the Obama administration threatening air strikes in Iraq once again, anti-war organizations and activists in the United States must take a clear position against further U.S. intervention of any type. Broad opposition must again be mobilized to demand:...

Boston – The $15-and-a-union struggle sweeping the country rolled through the streets of Boston on Gay Pride, June 14, as several union contingents paraded by hundreds of thousands of onlookers with banners and placards supporting the low-wage workers struggle and the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, United Steelworkers Local 8751....

Her name was Yuri, a Japanese woman born in the United States. I hesitate to
call her a Japanese-American, for to do so suggests she was a citizen. In
light of how she, her family and her community were treated during World War
II, especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, to call any of them
citizens would be an exaggeration....

In response to company harassment and attempts to silence workers who had
protested and walked off their jobs over intolerable working conditions,
Walmart workers in over 20 cities struck and demonstrated June 4 in a National
Strike Day and Action on Inequality. Demands included “No retaliation
against workers fighting for a just wage” and “$25,000 per year and enough hours to support their families.”...

Boston’s school bus drivers are entering the most intense phase yet of
their struggle against the notorious labor-busting Veolia Corporation. Four leaders of the drivers’ union, United Steelworkers Local 8751, remain fired and have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Veolia and the city of Boston have blatantly violated contract rules in giving out more than 100 summer jobs to non-union companies. The current school bus drivers’
contract expires on June 30. Hanging above everything are massive austerity
cuts in education for Boston schoolchildren. Among the responses by Team Solidarity — the voice of United School Bus Union Workers — is a call for a mass rally, called Solidarity Day
III, on June 30 in front of Veolia’s corporate offices....

Nearly 12 million Syrians cast their ballots on June 3 at 9,601 open polling sites across Syria and in Syrian embassies around the world. With a turnout of 72 percent, President Bashar al-Assad from the Ba’ath Party won over 88 percent of the vote....

It came on the heels of a powerful sit-in at the office of North Carolina’s Speaker of the House Thom Tillis on May 27, during which 11 fast food workers and four clerics were arrested after nearly 12 hours of sitting in at the speaker’s office. This time the Moral Monday movement rallied nearly 1,000 people at the North Carolina Legislature — called the General Assembly — on June 2 around the theme of environmental and health justice....

Efforts are underway to stop the anti-woman group “A Voice for Men” from holding its first international conference in Detroit the last weekend in June. This “Men’s Rights Advocates” group, based in Houston, promotes male supremacy, sexism and sexual violence against women. It was designated a hate group in 2012 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes against oppressed people in the U.S....

U.S. imperialism’s political switches can be breathtaking. It only took two days for Bowe Bergdahl to change from a diplomatic tool to a political football.

That dizzying switch has one positive result: It helps expose the reactionary character of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and gives an opportunity to review U.S. imperialism’s role in that country....

The following is based on releases that the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) issued on June 5. They concern the deteriorating health of long-term political prisoner Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who in the 1960s and 1970s, under his name at the time, H. Rap Brown, was a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for six years and was briefly in the Black Panther Party....

On June 3, nearly 12 million Syrians cast their ballots at one of the 9,601 polling sites across Syria. With turnout out at 72 percent, including the millions of Syrian refugees who live across the world, President Bashar al-Assad from the Ba’ath Party won the election with over 88 percent of the vote. Defeated was communist legislator Maher Hajjar, known for leading the protest movement in spring 2011 which called for better programs and assistance for the poor, who had 3.2 percent of the votes. Prominent businessman Hassan Abdullah al-Nouri also ran and received 4.3 percent....

Cuba is awaiting the return of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón
Labañino and Antonio Guerrero, the three of the Cuban 5 who remain
unjustly held in U.S. prisons. Along with René González and Fernando
González, who served their full sentences and returned to Cuba, these five
men are heroes who risked their own lives to infiltrate Miami-based gangs who
were bombing Cuban hotels and restaurants during the 1990s....

In an important military victory for the People’s
Republic of Donetsk, armed defenders brought down a Ukrainian military
helicopter outside the embattled city of Slavyansk on May 29. A Ukrainian Armed
Forces general and 13 soldiers were reported killed....

Why is the election in Syria so important that U.S. government officials have condemned it before it takes place? Why, at the same time, have U.S. officials embraced and applauded the results of elections organized by the military coup government of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt and the election by the fascist coup forces of billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine?...

We call on antiwar activists and people of all walks of life to stand up and oppose the horrific war against civilians in eastern Ukraine that has been unleashed by the right-wing coup regime in Kiev....

Youth and students from successive generations were influenced by Maya Angelou’s widely read book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” The autobiographical work addressed the formative years of the author, who died May 28 at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C., at the age of 86....

Following is a report and analysis of the May 25 elections by Union
Borotba (Struggle), a revolutionary socialist and anti-fascist organization in
Ukraine, translated by Workers World contributing editor Greg Butterfield and
available on the Borotba.org website. Oligarch Petro Poroshenko declared
himself the landslide winner of the presidential election, getting four times
the vote of his nearest rival, Julia Timoshenko....

Odeh is being charged with Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization, but
strongly asserts her innocence. Deutsch, who has represented political
activists and victims of police and government civil rights violations since
1970, was pleased with the ruling for a continuance and has begun working on a
strategy for the defense....

May 15 saw low-wage workers striking in over 150 U.S. cities, with
co-ordinated strikes and demonstrations in major cities worldwide. Thousands of
workers took part, responding to the call from groups like Fast Food Forward,
Communities for Change, Make the Road and others. These are workers’
organizations that are not unions, even though some of them have ties to some
big unions like the Service Employees and the Food and Commercial Workers....

Today, the romantic image of the rebels of 1968 inspires youth. Young,
beautiful, sexy participants of the revolutionary events of those times are
placed before us as heroes of the movie “The Dreamers” by Bernardo
Bertolucci, which is shown by every progressive youth film club. But those who
admire the youth of the sixties, apparently, have thought little about what the
youthful red rebels of 1968 would fight against today....

What makes this election unique is that it can help protect the sovereignty, even the existence of this country. It can help end the bloody war that has drained the lifeblood of the country. It is seen as a essential step toward national reconciliation....

Elombe Brath, a world-renown Pan-Africanist who promoted the national liberation of all African people from racism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, died at the age of 77 in Amsterdam Nursing Home in Harlem, New York. Born and raised in Harlem, Brath suffered a number of strokes since 2009. It is ironic that he died on May 19 — on what would have been the 89th birthday of the great Black Nationalist and internationalist, Malcolm X, whom Brath admired greatly, as he did Marcus Garvey....

The U.S.-backed junta of neoliberal politicians, oligarchs and fascists, which came to power in a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, staged presidential elections May 25 in an attempt to legitimize its rule....

“No to fascism in Ukraine! No war with Russia!” was the theme of
the International Action Center protest in New York’s Times Square on May
26, Memorial Day. The demonstrators’ determination to denounce U.S.
aggression and the expansion of NATO into Ukraine contrasted with the general
mood of the sunny spring holiday. Speakers at the rally demanded hands off the Republics of Donetsk and
Lugansk and expressed solidarity with the anti-fascist fighters there.
Representatives of South American liberation struggles in Venezuela and
Honduras spoke, aligning with those in Eastern Europe fighting against U.S.
imperialism. Anti-war soldiers denounced the Pentagon on Memorial Day and
called for people to remember those murdered by fascists in Ukraine. After more than an hour in Times Square, the demonstration set off for CNN
headquarters, about a mile away. Signs opposing the U.S. war machine and
militant slogans got a great reception from many tourists and passersby as the
demonstration moved up Broadway....

On February 22, the elected president of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup
which was supported by the Obama administration. Since then, the country has
been torn apart and violence has escalated. On May 2 in the southern city of
Odessa, supporters of the new unelected Kiev government, including members of
the violent extremist Right Sector party, surrounded peaceful, unarmed
anti-government protestors who had taken refuge in the city’s main union
hall. The right-wing crowd then set the union hall on fire, and 46 people died
by being burned alive or jumping to their deaths trying to escape....

Washington, D.C. — Westminster Church hosted an exhibit and sale of reproductions of watercolors by Antonio Guerrero, titled “I will die as I have lived,” on May 17. Guerrero is one of the unjustly imprisoned Cuban Five, who are the focus of an international campaign to free them from U.S. prisons....

Ras Baraka — the son of the late Amiri Baraka, a world-renowned poet, playwright and activist, and Amina Baraka, also a poet and activist — became the new mayor of Newark, N.J., on May 13. He won 54 percent of the vote in the largest city in New Jersey and a city which, according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, is more than 52 percent African American....

People in Ukraine, at the grassroots, gave a monumental surprise to the coup organizers in Kiev. Washington’s plan was to terrorize the population into silence. The role of fascist shock troops was to overturn the elected government and seize the armed power of the state....

Borotba is an openly Marxist organization, formed in 2011, that has been deeply involved in the struggle in Ukraine. It was driven out of Kiev by the Right Sector after a fascist-led coup overthrew the Viktor Yanukovych government. Borotba has helped to organize resistance to the reactionary forces in Kharkov, Odessa and other cities....

Solidarity with the resistance in southeastern Ukraine has spread to at least six West European countries’ anti-war movements. The actions described below were reported to us after we sent out a call by the United National Anti-war Coalition (UNAC) for solidarity demonstrations across the U.S. from May 9 to May 26 and requested reports from other parts of the world about similar solidarity actions....

The people of southeast Ukraine are fighting back. Now it is time for the
anti-war movement in this country to take a stand. We must act to stop the
horrifying onslaught of violence unleashed on the people of Ukraine by the U.S.
government and the big business interests it serves. We must not allow Wall
Street, Congress and the White House to continue the buildup for war against
Russia....

While the eyes of the world focus on the events in Ukraine, the U.S. empire is using this opportunity to intensify its plan to overthrow governments in the Latin American and Caribbean region that are leading the process for change there — Cuba and Venezuela....

It may surprise some that the U.S. government — especially under a reputedly liberal Democratic Party administration — would be supporting fascists in Ukraine. Not officially, of course. According to Washington and all the corporate media, the people given money and credibility by the U.S. are just anti-Russian patriots....

Meeting at Riverside Church on May 10, anti-war activists from the New York metropolitan area gave a kick-start to three weeks of activities in solidarity with the anti-fascist movement in Eastern Ukraine and opposing new U.S.-NATO ­aggression against Russia....

A video purportedly released today by the armed Boko Haram sect based in northeast Nigeria shows what are said to be schoolgirls held for a month by the group. The group’s leader says that the young women could be released in exchange for members of Boko Haram imprisoned by the Nigerian government....

The people of eastern Ukraine have defied imperialist threats from Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels and their puppets in Warsaw and Kiev and have carried out highly successful referendums under virtual wartime conditions....

Cecily McMillan, a 25-year-old progressive activist, was convicted of assault on a police officer in New York City Criminal Court on May 5. Now a convicted felon, she could receive a sentence of between two and seven years in prison....

Imagine a gathering of diverse activists in a medium-sized U.S. city, representing low-wage workers, communities mobilizing against police brutality and radical organizations. It might be an Occupy Wall Street encampment, a civil rights rally or anti-war conference. You may have attended such events yourself. Now imagine this gathering was attacked by a thousand members of the Ku Klux Klan, dispatched with government approval. Consider that the Klan members, armed with gasoline bombs, baseball bats and firearms, chased the unarmed activists into a union hall and set fire to the building. Suppose dozens of activists died in the fire, while others were shot dead or beaten to death while trying to escape the inferno. What if police then arrested survivors and the media blamed them for the blaze, while the bigots responsible were allowed to escape? How would the workers’ and progressive movements respond to such an atrocity? This is the horrific scenario that played out in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2. Neo-Nazi gangs bused in from western Ukraine marched through the city, posing as sports fans going to a soccer match. They attacked local anti-fascist activists who tried to block them outside a shopping center...

U.S. imperialism has orchestrated and approved a new military offensive against the anti-Kiev resistance in towns and cities of the populous, industrial region of eastern Ukraine. This is playing with fire....

Union Square, New York City — Since a migrant upsurge in 2006 revived May Day in the United States, Union Square in this city has attracted those most unequivocally in defense of worker and immigrant rights — who call not merely for immigration reform but for legalization of the undocumented, without conditions. Union Square has drawn together the most militant and anti-imperialist forces in this huge, multinational city....

The U.S. corporate media are in lock step lying and distorting the events in Ukraine. These are many little lies leading to another version of the Big Lie, as explained by Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and used to justify U.S. aggression from Vietnam to Iraq and Libya....

The overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. is against being dragged into another disastrous war. Nothing is more dangerous than the aggressive U.S./NATO troop movements right on the borders of Russia. Sending U.S. destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; scheduling threatening U.S./NATO war games and troop movements in East Europe; and imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation is a threat to peace on a world scale. We have seen the cost of past and continuing U.S. wars, which enrich the military corporations while impoverishing the targeted countries as well as poor and working people here in the U.S. The years of U.S. funding of fascist forces in Ukraine and the recognition of a government in Kiev that overthrew the elected government, seized power and appointed extreme right-wing groups to head the police, army and national guard in order to pull Ukraine into NATO membership makes the U.S. complicit in the complete denial of the rights of the Ukrainian people. It is also a provocation against the entire region....

It was rainy, windy and cold, but this didn’t
dampen the enthusiasm of dozens of protesters gathered outside the Ronald
Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on April 29
to tell the National Restaurant Association, “We can’t survive on
$7.25!” A number of passersby, in cars and on foot, gave the
protesters a big thumbs up....

In a determined protest against the U.S. use of drone
warfare, 150 people marched to the gates of Hancock Air Base in Syracuse,
N.Y., on April 27. The multinational march was part of a regional day of
education and action linking poverty, racism and war....

He was born in New Jersey 76 years ago as Rubin Carter, but most people knew
him as “The Hurricane,” his ring name earned after a dizzying
career as a ferocious middleweight boxer with a mean left hook....

The Northwestern University football players will exercise their right to vote on April 25 to form a union or not. This historic vote comes after the National Labor Relations Board ruled March 28 that these players had the right to unionize, which includes collective bargaining rights....

The owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, was caught on audiotape April 9 making undeniably racist remarks demanding that a female friend — who happens to be Black and Latina — not bring Black men to Clippers’ basketball games. That this tape was released in the midst of the playoffs and immediately involved some of the best-known present and former stars has made it national news. It has become the subject of a national discussion that even involved President Barack Obama....

The Soviet Union no longer exists. The Russian Federation is not a socialist state. But the U.S. military and political establishment still seek to destroy Russia. That’s the object of the crisis the Pentagon, State Department and CIA are orchestrating in Ukraine....

The Geneva statement signed by the U.S., EU, Russia and the Kiev puppet government on April 17 was meant by the U.S. and European imperialists to gain time for the regime in Kiev to regroup and push back the struggle in southeast Ukraine. Judging by the torrent of bellicose U.S. threats and propaganda that followed, the effort failed miserably. President Barack Obama had warned Russia that sanctions and isolation would follow if it didn’t get the resistance in southeast Ukraine to give up. Secretary of State John Kerry gave Russia “days, not weeks” to move against the activists. Vice President Joe Biden visited Kiev to show backing for Washington’s illegal coup regime in Kiev. This arrogance, fortified with lies about Russian forces being responsible for the popular uprisings, is driven by frustration stemming from at least three fundamental problems that U.S. imperialism faces in its struggle to seize Ukraine. First, no threats of any kind can bolster the faltering coup regime in Kiev. Second, no threats and ravings of imperialist politicians and generals will gain one ounce of political support among the Ukrainian masses in the southeast. Third, the dictates and ultimatums coming from the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have so far had no effect on pushing back the Russian government in its opposition to a U.S. takeover of Ukraine....

Pushed and prodded by U.S. officials, the far-right coup regime in Kiev is now in the twelfth day of an on-again, off-again military offensive against the rebellious working-class cities of southeastern Ukraine....

It seems almost too good to be true. On April 15, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced the creation of a new Conviction Review Unit to investigate disputed homicide convictions that have legitimate claims of new evidence and where defendants have declared their innocence...

As of this writing, the maneuver by U.S. and European
imperialism at the Geneva “reconciliation” talks to disarm and
disperse the anti-Western resistance in southeast Ukraine has been rebuffed by
the masses there....

The case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, which was presented to the Supreme
Court on March 25, involves the unprecedented, highly controversial issue of a
for-profit company’s claim to “religious liberty” because it
opposes paying for certain types of birth control for employees as mandated by
the Affordable Care Act....

News arrived this afternoon from Geneva that Russia, the
United States, the European Union and Ukraine’s coup government in Kiev
had reached an agreement expressed in a public text “on initial concrete
steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens.”...

What historical significance does May have for the people of Honduras? Is it
transcendent just because of the festivities on International Workers’
Day, during which workers around the world lift their collective fists to greet
their class brothers and sisters with the voices of proletarian
internationalism?...

Desperate to stamp out a popular uprising in
southeastern Ukraine, the junta in Kiev — which came to power
through a violent coup using fascist groupings against elected President Viktor
Yanukovych — is attempting to crush the newly declared
People’s Republic of Donetsk and rebellions in other cities....

The IAC will make reports on this important event available for our members
and friends who follow our website as they become available. The link below provides the program planned for the event this week....

With management approval, Reynes came in early sometimes to find a good spot
at the loading dock for his truck. The UPS bosses then turned around and fired
the driver on Feb. 26 for “stealing time.”...

Following the March 7 and 8 International Commission of Inquiry by Voices for the Five in London, efforts are now turned to building the Third ‘5 Days for the Cuban 5’ in Washington D.C. from 4-11 June 2014.The final report of London's International Commission of Inquiry will be presented to the U.S. public and will then be delivered direct to the Obama administration. The week of activities in Washington will bring together personalities from the U.S. and abroad, including jurists, parliamentarians, writers, intellectuals, activists and religious people to call for the freedom of the Cuban 5, five men unjustly imprisoned in U.S. prisons for defending their country against terrorism. René González, one of the Five who returned to Cuba after serving his entire sentence recently said. “The decision of arresting the Cuban 5 was made in Washington and it is there where the final decision of freeing them will take place.”...

ore than 80 events were held across the U.S. around the theme of “Not
1 More Deportation!” on April 5, the date immigrant rights activists
estimated that the 2 millionth person would be deported under the
administration of President Barack Obama. The actions were coordinated by
the National Day Labor Organizing Network, which says that the 2 million
deportations are “2 million too many.”...

Some 260 leftist political activists from 39 countries, mostly in Latin
America and the Caribbean but including people from around the world, gathered
in Mexico City from March 27 to 29. They joined hundreds from the hosting Labor
Party (Partido del Trabajo or PT) at its 18th International Seminar. Some 100
speakers, from a broad range of left political positions, spoke on many
subjects with a common thread: the danger posed by Washington’s
aggressive posture toward all countries south of the U.S. border and especially
toward the Bolivarian government of Venezuela....

On April 24, political prisoner and world-renowned
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal turns 60. He has spent over half his life in
solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row, and most recently,
since early 2012, he has been in general population at SCI Mahanoy
where he still faces life in prison despite ample evidence of his
innocence....

Progressives in Latin America and the
Caribbean have put defense of the Venezuelan government and people at the top
of their priorities. They showed this today when a seminar that had begun as a
standard exchange of information among workers and progressive organizations
from the continent and worldwide turned into a demonstration of solidarity with
Bolivarian Venezuela....

The U.S.-funded Aquino regime in the Philippines has arrested Wilma Tiamzon and Benito Tiamzon and five other consultants to the National Democratic Front peace negotiating team. The arrests violate the Joint Agreement on Safety and Impunity Guarantees that protects peace consultants from arrests....

The overwhelming, popular turnout of the Crimean masses who
affirmed their decision to separate from the Kiev coup regime in Ukraine and
associate with Russia is the first great setback for the U.S. and NATO in their
15-year march to the East....

In response to a call from the International Action Center, demonstrations,
outreach and other actions took place in cities and areas across the United
States in mid-March to demand U.S. hands off Venezuela and no U.S. intervention
in Ukraine or Russia. These actions also countered the lies and distortions of
the big-business-owned media regarding the situation in these areas of the
world....

Although escalating instability and threats of civil war have dominated the
corporate media’s coverage of the African continent, trade unions and
student organizations are raising issues that involve the workplace and
educational institutions. Workers and youth, through their unions and mass
organizations, have been expressing profound discontent with the impact of the world capitalist crisis, which has its origins in the Western imperialist
states....

Confronting a barrage of pro-war propaganda, anti-war groups, low-wage
workers and community activists are beginning to mobilize against U.S. war
moves in Ukraine, while continuing to rally against Washington’s efforts
to destabilize Venezuela’s Bolivarian government....

Emboldened by the U.S.-orchestrated coup d’état in the capital
city of Kiev and Pentagon military posturing against Russia, fascist violence
in Ukraine has escalated from vandalism to arson, beatings to shootings, and
now — the brazen murder of anti-fascist activists. To answer these
attacks, progressive and communist forces are continuing mass actions and
organizing self-defense....

Behind Washington’s hypocritical talk of “national
sovereignty,” “territorial integrity” and
“international law” in its efforts to undercut the overwhelming
vote of the people of Crimea to join Russia stands a stark struggle over
whether Ukraine will be dragged into the ever expanding, U.S.-commanded NATO
military web. Since 1995, the year NATO waged its first aggressive war against Yugoslavia, NATO has expanded into nine countries of Eastern Europe and three former republics of the former Soviet Union. The Obama administration is using more than words in this deepening struggle. The Pentagon has moved F-16 fighter-bombers, F-15 fighters, C-130 transport planes and RC-135 aerial tankers to Russia’s borders and sent the USS Truxtun destroyer, armed with cruise missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads, into the Black Sea. Washington threatens economic sanctions, putting pressure on Germany and other EU members to join in. A lot is at stake....

Across the U.S., anti-war activists, low-wage workers and community members
are beginning to mobilize to counter the latest U.S. war moves against Russia
and express outrage at the campaign of disinformation emanating from Washington
and corporate media outlets about recent events in Ukraine....

People across the country are outraged by Florida State Attorney Angela
Corey’s recent decision to retry Marissa Alexander, a Black woman and a
survivor of intimate partner violence who defended herself against her
attacker, with the possibility of a 60-year prison sentence....

“Plowshares” was a propaganda effort
fostered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to convince the world that nuclear
weapons, which the U.S. had used to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, had peaceful uses. In 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission — today the Department of Energy — came up with Project Chariot, a proposal to use nuclear bombs to create a port in northwest Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea....

As reported by the Union Borotba (Struggle), a mass protest took place on
the March 8 International Women’s Day holiday in Kharkiv city center in
the eastern Ukraine. Many of the thousands carried red flags and gathered near
the monument to Lenin, “which we managed to protect from the Nazis during
recent rallies.”...

Black Reconstruction represented the aspirations of millions of formerly
enslaved people to win bourgeois democratic rights. This radical period was
violently cut short by a terrorist counterrevolution, led by the former
slavocracy with complicity from the federal government....

The origins of women’s oppression in the rise of class society and the
historic need for socialism were raised as well. Two of the speakers gave a
call to “Shut it down!” on April 1, the day when objectors to the
Detroit emergency manager’s bankruptcy plan of austerity and giveaways to
the banks will turn in their objections and rally outside the federal
bankruptcy court....

The atmosphere was electric and filled with optimism on
March 8 as a dynamic march took over the sidewalks of the East Village and then
went up Sixth Avenue toward midtown Manhattan. The march commemorated the 104th
anniversary of International Working Women’s Day....

The International Action Center has put out a call for a week of actions
regarding Ukraine, lasting from March 10 to 17. We wholeheartedly endorse this
call and encourage all our readers to take part in whatever way you can....

Corporate media have always lied about the reasons for war, from Vietnam and Iraq to Libya and Syria. If you turn on CNN or FOX News, read the New York Times or listen to NPR, you aren't getting the real story. Here are 10 things the U.S. corporate media won't tell you about what's happening in Ukraine....

The International Action Center publishes here in full the statement by the
United National Antiwar Coalition, which demands “U.S. Hands off Ukraine
and Venezuela” and calls the U.S. government “the main instigator
of the present crises in both countries.”...

A proposal submitted to the 15-member U.N. Security Council on March 3 calls
for the deployment of an additional 12,000 foreign troops to the Central
African Republic. The so-called “peacekeeping force” is ostensibly
designed to reinforce the 9,000 French, African and European Union soldiers
already in or being sent to the mineral-rich state....

When Kiev’s City Hall was seized with guns and Molotov cocktails, one
of the first acts of the Euromaidan street fighters was to unfurl a number of
flags and insignia. Prominent among the flags were swastikas, Iron Crosses,
Nazi SS lightning bolts, the Celtic cross used by the Ku Klux Klan, and the
Confederate “stars and bars” flag of slaveholders in the United
States. (tinyurl.com/ltfu4vq)...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Kiev on March 4 and laid flowers
at the site of a memorial — to fascists who had died in the fighting that
toppled the legally elected Ukrainian government, headed by Viktor
Yanukovych....

The armed coup over the Feb. 22-23 weekend in Kiev, which
was with great probability supported by Washington, is momentous in many ways.
Within hours the coup trashed the agreement that took so long to be
hammered out in discussions led by the European Union and especially by
Germany; this agreement involved Moscow and was signed by the Ukrainian
opposition parties on the one hand and the government and President Viktor
Yanukovych on the other. Thus, not everyone in the West shared in the exuberant
joy shown after the overthrow. It has once again become clear that in relation
to the Ukraine and Russia, the U.S. and the EU, specifically Washington and
Berlin, act according to different and sometimes conflicting agendas....

Anti-war activists rallied in New York’s Times Square in the bitter
cold on Feb. 27 to protest the U.S. and European Union’s blatant
intervention that is promoting fascist elements against the people of Venezuela
and Ukraine. The International Action Center and Fight Imperialism, Stand
Together (FIST), a youth organization that had scheduled a regional conference
here on March 2, called the action, which other anti-imperialists joined....

As internationalists living in the most powerful imperialist country in the
world, it is incumbent upon us to always pay attention to the international
situation. If you don’t pay attention to it, it can overwhelm you. The
present crisis in Ukraine is a case in point....

On Dec. 15, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), with the
full tacit support of Washington, traveled to Ukraine uninvited and spoke to
demonstrators who are trying to overthrow the elected government. These
demonstrators are protesting President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to
sign a trade deal with the European Union....

The present crisis in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula was provoked by the
seizure of political power in Kiev by proxies of the U.S. imperialists and
their junior partners in the European Union. This seizure of power, by political subversion and fascist shock troops in the streets, if successfully consolidated, would bring a regime of pro-imperialist collaborators to the southern borders of Russia. This provocative act of aggression by Western imperialism threatens the sovereignty of Ukraine and the stability of the region. It courts the danger of war. ...

United States weapons are still killing Iraqis as the government
that the U.S. 10-year-long occupation installed bombs the rebellious cities of
Fallujah and Ramadi. According to supporters of Iraqi sovereignty around the
world, the regime of Nouri al-Maliki has exaggerated the presence of
al-Qaida-like groups to justify its assault on the population....

The bloody interventionist hand of US imperialism abounds. Whether it is in
the Ukraine or in Venezuela, right-wing forces that support and want to
continue austerity measures, or reverse the revolutionary progress made in
Venezuela by the Chavez/Maduro administrations that benefits the workers and
the poor of Venezuela are taking center stage right now emboldened by their
backers in Washington....

Destroying the Ukraine government through an armed insurrection is part
of a broader strategy by U.S. imperialism to colonize the former Soviet
republics and encircle Russia. The right-wing forces now running Kiev would let
the Ukrainian masses become debt slaves to U.S., French and German
banks. Washington has escalated its global campaign of reactionary subversion from Ukraine to Venezuela. A takeover in Ukraine would bring the Pentagon and Wall Street to the borders of Russia. In Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution is crucial to the bloc of countries resisting U.S. imperialist
domination in Latin America....

When the imperialist strategists want money, they get it.
Billions of dollars have been made available for U.S.-backed crimes of
sabotage, destabilization and aggressive intervention, including funds for the
most reactionary fascist elements in Venezuela, pro-Nazis in the Ukraine,
and for forces linked to al-Qaida in Syria....

Some 500 people gathered here at St. Peters
“Jazz” Church on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, to celebrate the
Dec. 31 release of 74-year-old people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart from maximum
security at Carswell Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas, after
four years behind bars....

Providence, R.I. — A multinational grouping of women came together on
Feb. 8 for the first Women’s Assembly Planning Committee meeting. The
committee is organizing a Women of All Colors Assembly in Providence on
International Women’s Day, March 8....

The United States supported repressive reactionaries in Haiti even before
its independence in 1804. The first foreign aid granted by the U.S. —
$750,000, a tremendous sum then — was sent to French slave masters in
Haiti to put down the rebellion. This was done during slave-owning George
Washington’s administration, under the direction of slave-owning
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson....

U.S. and European Union imperialism have initiated an offensive against the
Ukrainian government. It is part of their attempt to reconquer parts of the
former Soviet Union and surround, weaken and destroy Russia....

The current violence by rightist forces opposing the Bolivarian Revolution is a continuation of the siege that began in 2001 when President Hugo Chávez approved 49 economic laws in the framework of the Enabling Law of 2001. At that time, particularly the Land Law and the Law on Hydrocarbons represented the first threat of the revolution to the economic
power of the comprador bourgeoisie and its imperialist allies. This was years
before Commander Chávez, who died a year ago on March 5, declared
socialism as a path for the revolution....

“I’m a college graduate, African-American, and I’m
gay.” With these words spoken on Feb. 9, Michael Sam, an All-American
college defensive back with the highly ranked Missouri Tigers in 2013, could
potentially make history as the first openly gay male recruited to a National
Football League football team....

Developments in Central and East Africa have dominated news coverage of
Africa since December. The split within the ruling Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a close ally of Washington, and the
deployment of French and African troops in the Central African Republic have
led to an escalation of Pentagon involvement in these states....

An international conference here on Feb. 8 brought
together workers, community members and activists with one common enemy:
Veolia. Besides the 100 attendees, many more joined by Skype and watched
globally via live streaming....

Most progressive activists in the United States probably know about the
reactionary, racist Koch brothers. But one has to wonder when a New York Times
editorial (online Jan. 25) publicly worries about the financiers of the Tea
Party and their growing influence on the political system....

More than 1,000 student volunteers, along with rank-and-file workers and
professionals from the northern and western cities of the U.S., traveled to
Mississippi and southwest Tennessee in the summer of 1964 to assist African
Americans in their decades-long struggle to acquire the right to vote....

The much ballyhooed Geneva II peace talks, which were supposed to bring
about peace in Syria, ended on Jan. 31 with no agreement for one very good
reason: The U.S had no intention of seeking any real peace agreement, but was
intent on using the forum as a background for propaganda and as a way to
deceive and weaken the Syrian government....

After spending 15 years unjustly imprisoned for fighting terrorism, Fernando
González, one of the Cuban Five, is scheduled to be released from federal
prison on Feb. 27. Fernando will be the second of the Five to be released.
René González was released in October 2011 after serving his entire
sentence....

In the Boston working-class neighborhood of Dorchester, hundreds of labor
and community leaders and rank-and-file workers jammed the streets Feb. 1 in
front of the headquarters of one of the planet’s biggest conglomerate
corporations, Veolia Transportation. Their voices, music and drumming filled
the air with demands for “Union justice now!” and “Down with
Veolia’s union busting!”...

The appeal went out: “Just like Dr. King said in 1965, ‘Come to Selma!’; we’re saying in 2014, ‘Come to Raleigh!’” And come they did. Over 80,000 demonstrators took part in the Moral March on Raleigh, Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People’s Assembly on Feb. 8....

Despite bitterly cold temperatures, more than 100 people
— chanting “Not one more!” — protested Jan. 30 outside
New York Police Department headquarters in lower Manhattan to demand justice
for Islan Nettles. Nettles, an African-American transgender woman, was brutally
beaten in Harlem on Aug. 17. She died from her injuries five days later.

Eyewitnesses reported that a man named Paris Wilson attacked Nettles,
shouted anti-trans and anti-gay slurs, and beat her while she lay helpless on
the ground....

One after another, the mostly West African immigrant
SuperShuttle workers poured out their grievances in front of the Veolia
transportation headquarters in Baltimore on Jan. 20 — the Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday — expressing their anger at what they described
as near-slavery working conditions. Global transportation giant Veolia, which
owns SuperShuttle, is notorious for its anti-worker activities....

The attempt by Veolia, an international conglomerate, to bust the Boston
School Bus Drivers Union has created a widespread fightback movement. Its next
focus is Solidarity Day 2 (SD2), a demonstration set for Feb. 1 outside the
company’s headquarters....

Under increasing pressure and scrutiny from civil rights groups, public
polls — and even their own imperialist allies — the National
Security Agency, which has been carrying out massive programs of domestic
spying, is beginning to show serious cracks in its armor of secrecy and
criminality....

With 55.9 million television viewers watching the National Football
Conference championship game on Jan. 19, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard
Sherman sealed his team’s dreams of going to Super Bowl XVIII by tipping
away a last minute pass to San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree
in the end zone. This game-changing play occurred within seconds of the end of
the game. This tremendous show of athleticism should have been the main
headline, but due to the corporate media, the attention of millions of people
was diverted to his postgame interview....

For nearly seven months in 2011, NATO planes — particularly from the
U.S., France, Britain and Canada — carried out a massive bombing campaign
in Libya intended to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi....

We are asking people to make at least one call to demand that Clarence Moses-El be released from prison, where he is in the 27th year of a 48 sentence for a crime he did not commit.Your calls are important and will have an impact....

On Jan. 17, dozens of people gathered for a press conference and protest
outside Fox News in Philadelphia to denounce the attacks of Fox analysts and
the Fraternal Order of Police on political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and on Debo
Adegbile, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Department of
Justice, because of Adegbile’s legal advocacy work for Abu-Jamal....

Local 32BJ of the Service Employees union organized a protest on Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 20, to demand the day as a paid holiday for airport
contract workers. Hundreds of workers marched across the LaGuardia Airport
access bridge in Queens, N.Y., after the airlines and the Port Authority of New
York & New Jersey repeatedly refused to make MLK Day a paid holiday. These
workers also want 32BJ recognized as their union....

For the fifth year in a row, the rank-and-file autoworker advocacy group
Autoworker Caravan protested outside the North American International Auto Show
at Cobo Hall, in Detroit, on Jan. 12. This protest’s theme was the demand
for a “people’s recovery.” In an Occupy-style mike check and
skit, the question of “whose recovery?” was asked several
times....

Veolia Transportation, the giant transnational conglomerate, is finding itself increasingly isolated in its attempt to break the leadership of United Steelworkers union Local 8751, the Boston school bus drivers union....

Thousands of teachers, students and their families and progressive
organizations shook Puerto Rico’s local government as they went to the
streets all over the island on Jan. 14 and 15 to demand that the cost of
PR’s severe economic crisis is not carried on the backs of the public
school teachers....

Amiri Baraka — an award-winning poet, playwright and Black
revolutionary — died on Jan. 9 at the age of 79 in Newark, N.J.,
following a short illness. He was a supporter of many left-wing causes,
including the ongoing struggle to free political prisoners like Mumia
Abu-Jamal. In 2009, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture held a 75th birthday tribute event for Baraka in Harlem, N.Y. A memorial and funeral
were held for Baraka at Newark Symphony Hall on Jan. 18, where thousands of
people attended to celebrate his life and immeasurable political and cultural
contributions. The following are excerpts from the obituary that was
distributed at the memorial....

Clarence Moses-El has been in prison since 1987, when he was sentenced to 48 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. He has maintained his innocence since the beginning. The three people originally identified as suspects by the victim were never arrested nor were they ever questioned....

The federal holiday that commemorates martyred civil rights, social justice
and peace activist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. takes on added significance
this year in light of the renewed attacks on municipalities throughout the
United States. Workers and students in public educational institutions are
facing massive layoffs and school closings, while local government employees
are threatened with job elimination and the theft of pensions and health care
programs....

The fight to reinstate the wrongly fired leaders of United Steelworkers
Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, got a boost on Jan. 8 when
Veolia Transportation lost the contract to run Massachusetts’ commuter
rail system....

An increase in deaths in Iraq from internal fighting and bombing doubled in
2013 from a year earlier, reaching levels unseen since 2008. In early January,
the Nouri al-Maliki regime launched an attack on demonstrators in Falluja and
Ramadi, using the alleged presence of al-Qaida as a pretext and asking for U.S.
military aid....

Amiri Baraka, a longtime Black revolutionary who was very influential in the
struggle against racist and class oppression for over five decades, died on
Jan. 9 at the age of 79, following a short illness in Newark, N.J. At a
Jan.10 public forum in New York City, Baraka used his status as a spoken word poet, writer and playwright to help elevate the Black liberation struggle starting in the 1960s — when he was first known as Leroi Jones — until his death....

Supporters demanding justice for Andy Lopez, led
by the Mothers in White, packed a Sonoma County Board of Supervisors (BOS)
public hearing on Jan. 7. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez was killed by Deputy
Erick Gelhaus, Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Department, on Oct. 22 as Andy was
returning a replica AK-47 BB gun to his friend’s house. Ever since the
killing, the streets of Santa Rosa have been filled by young, mostly Latino/a
students demanding justice for the loss of his young life....

It has been a long and tortured haul — from judge to judge, from bias
to hatred (with no small amount of jealousy, we might add) — to punish
Stewart, not because of her words in the press, but because of her advocacy on
behalf of the poor, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the targeted and the
powerless....

A 50-person committee to draft an amended Egyptian constitution completed
its work. The military-appointed regime that came to power through an army coup
on July 3 of last year is encouraging people to vote in the upcoming national
referendum on Jan. 14-15....

An increase in deaths in Iraq from internal fighting and bombing doubled in
2013 from a year earlier, reaching levels unseen since 2008. In early
January, the Nouri al-Maliki regime launched an attack on demonstrators in
Falluja and Ramadi, using the alleged presence of al-Qaida as a pretext and
asking for U.S. military aid....

When the police in Cambodia shot and killed four people Jan. 3 during a
workers’ demonstration calling for higher wages in the garment industry, it got the attention of the media in the imperialist world. The story, as they presented it, was a simple one: The Cambodian government was repressing workers seeking a living wage....

The year was 1965. The U.S. government’s war in Vietnam was
increasingly unpopular, especially among the young people being drafted and
sent there. The movements of oppressed peoples for liberation were also
growing, often inspired by the anticolonial struggles and the resistance of the
Vietnamese....

The US government is now using the IRS as a weapon against us since they have failed to defeat us with OFAC -- the Office of Foreign Assets Control (the government entity that enforces the blockade of Cuba). For the past twenty-two years we have stood firm in our faith and our conviction as we have organized our US-Cuba Friendshipment caravans. It is our faith which calls us to offer "a cup of cold water" (Matthew 25:35) to our brothers and sisters suffering as a result of US policies. This is an attack on people of faith and conscience and IFCO is standing firm and fighting back, as we have done for nearly half a century....

A heartfelt thanks to all who stood by Lynne with letters, emails, petitions
and telephone calls to the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, U.S. Federal
Bureau of Prisons, Attorney General's Office, U.S. Department of Justice,
members of Congress, the White House and U.S. Embassies and who organized and participated in vigils, demonstrations, rallies and speak-outs throughout the
world....

A statement issued Jan. 1 by the Moratorium NOW!
Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs has put the
spotlight on Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s sworn testimony that
he was allegedly set to legally challenge Bank of America and United Bank of
Switzerland on the grounds of fraud and other counts, but decided not to pursue
them....

Starting last March and again during the December holiday rush, the German
service workers’ union Ver.di, which is organizing the workers at
Amazon’s German operation, has conducted a series of short strikes in the
company’s warehouses demanding higher pay and union recognition....

Safe at home with her son in Brooklyn, where she will live, surrounded by a loving family and friends, Lynne described her four years in prison as horrible. She told of how she barely survived the life-threatening chemotherapy treatments. She stressed that she won’t forget the women that she left behind in the prison, and that she’ll fight for criminal justice system reforms. We also reflect back to this past summer and the many weeks that Ralph stood in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., in the rain and sweltering heat, with his signs, banner and leaflets; speaking to anyone who would listen about Lynne’s plight. He and a group of supporters protested in front of the U.S. Justice Department against the director’s refusal to approve Lynne’s request for compassionate release. Ralph said he saw no acceptable alternative other than to fight like hell for Lynne’s release. His unwavering love, spirit, strength and determination were contagious. How could anyone knowing him or Lynne not join in the struggle? Or not give up?
...

Well, the impossible takes a little longer !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We
learned this morning that the US Attorney's office has made the motion for
my compassionate release and that the Order was on Judge Koeltl's desk.
Since on the last go-round he stated in Court that he would treat it
"favorably", we are now just waiting expectantly....So If this reaches you before midnight tonight raise a glass of bubbly to the joy of all of us that the old girl is OUT !!...

Could we build an activist organization to take on the most difficult, unpopular issues and defend the countries, people and individuals who are thoroughly demonized by the U.S. corporate media? Could we oppose racism, mass incarceration, and hunger at home, and link these crimes to endless U.S. wars abroad?...

Last month, a delegation from the International Action Center traveled to Honduras to assist with monitoring the presidential election there. Widespread fraud was expected and did indeed happen. The IAC delegation is unanimous in declaring the election as fraudulent. While in Honduras, the delegation also had the opportunity to meet with many Hondurans who have suffered under the brutal U.S. government-supported Honduran regime. One such meeting was in Comayagua, Honduras’ original capital, with the families of men murdered in a horrific prison fire. ...

South Africa’s masses poured into the streets and assigned venues to
mourn the death and celebrate the life and struggles of Nelson Rohlihahla
Mandela. From formal memorial services in Johannesburg to Mandela’s remains lying in state in Pretoria, to community gatherings and those at his residences, all culminating in the state funeral in Qunu, people from inside the country and internationally expressed their grief and appreciation for the heroic contributions of one of the most notable political figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries. At the official memorial services on Dec. 10, which took place at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg where the 2010 World Soccer Cup was held, more than 100,000 people gathered inside and around the stadium to express their condolences. There was live streaming of the memorial as well as activities surrounding the stadium....

To date, no official has been brought to justice for war crimes,
crimes against humanity and for waging a war of aggression, the supreme
international crime. We have to change that equation. All those who are
responsible for the invasion of Iraq should be held accountable for the
destruction of the country's infrastructure, its economic and social
structures, its historical past and its health and education....

Millions for Mumia, an anti-death penalty project of the International Action
Center since 1999, strongly urges its friends and allies to support the
important efforts by the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home especially the $60 for
Mumia's 60th birthday appeal. The Campaign stresses that $60,000 can be raised if 1,000 people donate $60; there is an incentive for the first 100 people who donate. Also $60 is around the cost of one dinner for two or movie tickets for four adults....

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh has written a detailed
and devastating exposure of the U.S. government’s manipulation of
military intelligence to create a pretext for the war it very nearly unleashed
against Syria last September....

With strong, almost universal support from the corporate
media, the United States government along with the European Union is carrying
out a propaganda blitz while threatening sanctions against the government of
Ukraine....

We, the undersigned, call on Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and recommend that Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania immediately release Abu-Jamal from prison. In 2011, the death sentence of this world-renowned journalist was declared unconstitutional and commuted to life without parole for allegedly murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Abu-Jamal is an outstanding citizen, who has been racially profiled and targeted for his political affiliations by a Philadelphia police department with a long history of brutality and corruption. For thirty years, he has been denied basic rights. ...

Over the course of international climate change conferences since the Kyoto
Accords were established in 1997, a pivotal debate has been whether developed
countries or developing countries should shoulder the primary responsibility
for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions....

"I need to ask once again for your assistance in forcing the Bureau of Prisons to grant my Compassionate Release. They have been stonewalling since August and my life expectancy, as per my cancer doctor, is down to 12 months. They know that I am fully qualified and that over 40,000 people have signed on to force them to do the right thing, which is to let me go home to my family and to receive advanced care in New York City. ...

The six-month nuclear agreement among Iran and the “5+1”
countries has been described as a breakthrough, a departure, a disaster or a
betrayal, depending on the speaker. Much of the language of the agreement
reached in Geneva on Nov. 24 reeks of imperialist arrogance....

The Congress of South African Trade Unions joins all South
Africans, and millions more all over the world, in mourning the sad loss today,
5 December 2013, of the greatest ever South African and most inspirational
leader in our struggle for liberty and democracy, our beloved Comrade, Nelson
Rolihlahla Mandela....

Just after an extended period of time in lockdown, one of the Cuban Five
political prisoners inside the U.S., Hero of the Republic of Cuba Gerardo
Hernández Nordelo, dedicated this short message to the memory of Nelson
Mandela....

When Latin America is under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back! The
revolutionary youth of FIST - Fight Imperialism, Stand together want to send a
solidarity delegation to the World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) in
Quito, Ecuador this December! The WFYS is an exciting anti-imperialist
gathering where of tens of thousands of young people from around the world to
share their struggles and learn from each other. The Festival is held every
several years, usually in a nation that engaged in a struggle against
imperialism....

Africans were enslaved by Britain and the United States in continental North
America for nearly 250 years (1619-1865). The profits accrued from the Atlantic
slave trade led to the rise of industrial capitalism and the worldwide
exploitative system of imperialism. (See “Capitalism and Slavery”
by Eric Williams, 1944)...

Marissa Alexander, the 34-year-old African-American woman who was sentenced
to 20 years in prison for defending herself against her abusive former spouse,
was released on $200,000 bail on Nov. 27. She will remain under house
arrest and electronic monitoring in her Jacksonville, Fla., home until her
retrial, which is tentatively set for this coming March 31....

On Nov. 18, thousands of protesters came out into the streets throughout Haiti to say, “Down with Martelly!” They were commemorating the 210th anniversary of the battle of Vertières, when Jean-Jacques Dessalines led his forces to decisive victory in Haiti’s revolutionary war against its French slave masters....

The capitalist 1% class is trembling at the specter of a union victory at Walmart, the largest multinational corporation in the world. On Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, shoppers did not just find cheap goods. They encountered some class truth....

Every year the International Action Center organizes a national mailing to our many friends and supporters. Donations from this mailing help sustain the Solidarity Center, the home of so many struggles against racism, cutbacks and war....

If Veolia Transportation’s union-busting crackdown on the United
Steelworkers Local 8751 Boston school bus drivers’ leadership was meant to intimidate the rank and file, it is having the opposite effect. On Oct. 8, the company locked out the drivers after they held a legally protected protest of the company’s many unfair labor practices. Since then, an escalating struggle between Veolia and the drivers’ union has awakened the membership, whose majority Haitian and Cape Verdean workers have consistently turned out in the hundreds for raucous demonstrations, meetings and job actions....

The Honduran people remain in a state of organized “tense calm” a day after the country’s Supreme Electoral Council (TSE) declared ruling National Party leader Juan Orlando Hernández the winner in the polls, supposedly defeating Libertad y Refundación (Libre) party candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Hondurans had turned out in record numbers to vote for Castro de Zelaya, and Libre has denounced the TSE for committing fraud in the elections, and is organizing its base, made up of all sectors of Honduran working-class society....

For nearly a decade, the natural gas industry has drained valuable water
resources, poisoned the land with dangerous chemicals, released radiation into
water supplies and increased the danger of global warming through its
unconventional drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking for
short....

This week a delegation will travel to Honduras to show our solidarity with
the resistance there during the country’s national elections. This will
be the third time the International Action Center has sent a delegation to
Honduras. The first was in October 2009, when democratically elected President
Mel Zelaya was overthrown in a U.S.-supported coup. We were able to witness
with our own eyes a burgeoning and exciting resistance movement incorporating
all sectors of Honduras’s working class....

A presidential election is taking place in Honduras today
that polls indicate will reverse the 2009 coup. Progressive and human rights
organizations have reported on the military’s last-minute attempts to
intimidate international observers who have come to ensure a fair and free
election process....

On Nov. 6, the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP insurgency published a joint statement regarding the agreement reached on the second item on the agenda of the peace negotiations that have been underway in Havana, Cuba. The point in question is “political participation.”...

A missile launched from a CIA drone killed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakimullah Mehsud in northwest Pakistan. This Nov. 1 strike occurred just 18 hours before a planned invitation to a conference between Taliban leaders and the Pakistan government. The conference was designed to end the long and bloody civil war in that country. (Inter Press Service, Nov. 7)...

The multinational working class of New York City — who seemed to have been submerged as a political factor during the long reign of Wall Street billionaire Michael Bloomberg — have elected a new mayor who gives the appearance, at least, of being Bloomberg’s opposite. And that is what was important about this election....

Across the country, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities celebrated two big victories. First, Illinois became the 15th state to recognize same-sex marriages. Then, the U.S. Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity....

A New York City rally on Oct. 24 commemorated the 75th anniversary of the minimum wage law’s passage and called for increasing it to at least $15 an hour. A city public sector union speaker stressed that U.S. law does not recognize minimum wage rights for people with disabilities. They don’t receive equal pay for equal work....

Boston’s school bus drivers’ union, Steelworkers Local 8751,
continues to garner support from parents, unions and community leaders in the
face of an ongoing attack by the multinational conglomerate Veolia against the
union and its leaders....

Solidarity Day for the Boston School Bus Union 5 drew
hundreds of drivers from Steelworkers Local 8751, in addition to supporters
from near and far today. An immediate measure of its success could be seen on
the nightly television news. For the first time since Oct. 8, when the union
was illegally locked out by Veolia Transportation, the workers’ side of
the story was finally revealed....

We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, appeal to all our
global region committees, national chapters, member-organizations, our friends
and all the people of the world to carry out a campaign of raising resources
and delivering them to the millions of people afflicted by super typhoon
Yolanda (Haiyan) in 35 provinces in the central part of the Philippines....

For nearly a decade, the natural gas industry has drained valuable water
resources, poisoned the land with dangerous chemicals, released radiation into
water supplies and increased the danger of global warming through
its unconventional drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking
for short....

Haiyan, a disastrous Class 5 super-typhoon, just roared
across the Philippines with winds believed to have set new records for this
type of storm. It was so destructive that, as of this writing, authorities
there have not been able to provide even an estimate of the carnage....

The notorious Veolia Corporation fired two leaders of Steelworkers Local 8751 on Nov 1. “You are discharged, effective immediately” read the letters to Grievance Chair Stevan Kirschbaum and Vice President Steve Gillis. Three other members of the Boston School Bus Union 5 — Recording Secretary Andre ­Francois and Stewards Garry Murchison and Richard Lynch — have also been suspended and threatened with firing. They are known collectively as the School Bus Union 5 (SBU 5)...

Thousands of students and community members have
taken to the streets to protest the killing of 13-year-old Latino student Andy
Lopez, who was gunned down by a Santa Rosa sheriff’s deputy on Oct. 22,
as Lopez was returning a replica AK-47 BB gun to his friend’s house....

Reproductive justice took a one-two punch in unrelated court decisions on
Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. One court allowed a medically unnecessary law to close many
women’s health centers that perform abortions in Texas. The other ruling
was a “partial victory” for right-wingers who oppose the Affordable
Care Act’s provision that employer-sponsored plans must provide free
coverage for contraception....

Since the first day of the union-busting attack by global imperialist
conglomerate Veolia and the city of Boston against the leaders of Steelworkers
Local 8751, the USW International has been committed to providing the highest
priority legal defense. They assembled a formidable team of lawyers from their
Boston firm, while the Office of the General Counsel of the USW, headquartered
in Pittsburgh, has had direct and daily involvement....

The following letter is a rebuttal to an Oct. 9 public attack against the
Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Steelworkers 8751 by Marie St-Fleur, an aide to lame duck Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and a former Massachusetts State Representative. Andre Francois is Local 8751 recording secretary and one of the School Bus Union 5, suspended by union-busting corporation Veolia....

A U.S.-sponsored military coup in Honduras on June 29, 2009, ousted elected
President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. Since that time, his spouse, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, has become a leading figure in the movement to restore his presidency as well as a leader in the burgeoning resistance movement for the rights of all throughout the country...

In an inspiring event Nov. 1 at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury’s Dudley
Square, the heart of Boston’s African-American community, about 200
people, many of them Boston school bus drivers, attended the Boston premiere of the documentary film “Mumia Abu-Jamal: Long Distance
Revolutionary.” The event was emceed by Miya X of the Women’s Fightback Network....

Since Veolia took over management of school bus transportation in July,
there have been hundreds of violations of workers’ rights guaranteed
under the contract — a contract that Veolia had previously agreed to
honor. These violations include unfair wage shortages, withholding of benefits,
constant route changes that created chaos, overcrowding on buses endangering student safety and causing lateness, among dozens of other management-created issues. The company has refused to take any of the workers’ concerns seriously and has ignored their repeated requests to address these violations....

The controversial documentary “Let the Fire Burn” had its
Philadelphia premiere on Oct. 26 during the 2013 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Introducing the film, which is about the 1985 bombing of the MOVE house by
Philadelphia police, director Jason Osder described it as “one of the
most relevant films to be shown during the festival.”...

The International Action Center condemns the strike by Israeli planes or
missiles of Syrian territory near the coastal city of Latakia on Oct. 31. This
is at least the third time this year that Israeli forces have bombed or hit
targets inside Syria, according to media and U.S. government sources....

Sixty-six year old Rasmea Odeh is a Palestinian-American feminist, activist, educator and community leader. She has served as the associate director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) in Chicago since 2004. For the past 10 years, Rasmea has built unprecedented community support for close to 600 Arab immigrant women on issues related to English literacy, gender violence, inter-generational cultural conflicts, racial profiling, immigrant rights, and access to social and economic resources. She has established community-wide education projects related to civil and human rights, social justice, and community economic development and workshops that allow Arab immigrant women to tell, write, and perform their immigration stories while improving their writing skills. In 2013, Rasmea received the "Outstanding Community Leader Award" from the Chicago Cultural Alliance, which described her as a woman who has "dedicated over 40 years of her life to the empowerment of Arab women, first in her homes of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, where she was an activist, and then the past 10 years in Chicago....

It was a true indication of what workers’ power means. A mass outpouring of workers at an hours-long rally tonight served notice to the notorious, union-busting transnational corporation, Veolia, that rank-and-file members of Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers
Union, stand prepared to defend their leaders and union by any means
necessary. Today Veolia held a second disciplinary hearing to try to illegally
terminate five elected officers of Local 8751 — Grievance Chair Stevan
Kirschbaum, Recording Secretary Andre Francois, Vice President Steve
Gillis and Stewards Garry Murchison and Richard Lynch. As the speeches, chants and drumming penetrated the hearing, the Veolia bosses were forced to initiate a stay on imposing any discipline against the Five — until a third hearing, scheduled to take place on Oct. 31 at 3 p.m. No one had to be convinced that the bosses are dragging out the hearings in hopes that the union will tire of mobilizing in support of the Five. The first hearing, on Oct. 23, had ignited the bus drivers and their supporters to rally against the fabricated charges brought against their leaders....

In an impressive display of strength and unity in the face of a state attack against a militant union, hundreds of Boston bus drivers, bus monitors and community supporters came out tonight in support of the School Bus Union 5: Andre Francois, Steven Gillis, Stevan Kirschbaum, Richard Lynch and Garry Murchison. Today’s events put the Veolia transnational corporation on the defensive, thwarting its hell-bent plan to break the union by attempting to unlawfully fire these long-time, respected members of Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union. The first hit against Veolia’s plans to terminate Gillis, Kirschbaum and the three other defendants was the legal brief presented to the corporation from the Steelworkers International legal defense team on Oct. 21. It reads in
part: “As is explained herein, none of the named employees has
engaged in any of the misconduct alleged against them inasmuch as the facts (as now known to the union) make clear that the events of October 8, 2013, amounted to an unlawful lockout by the Company and not a work stoppage by the employees and that, even if there were a work stoppage prior to the time when the Company locked the employees off the property, such work stoppage would have been a lawful unfair labor practice strike in any event. Moreover, pursuant to the facts expounded herein, the five named employees did not plan or orchestrate any of the concerted activity that occurred on October 8 and thus have no culpability beyond that.”...

U.S. military operations on Oct. 5 in Libya and Somalia were neither
isolated events nor solely prompted by the siege at Westgate shopping mall in
Nairobi, Kenya, for which the Somali-based Al-Shabaab took responsibility.
Since December, the White House has declared that it will intensify its
presence in Africa under the guise of waging the “war on
terrorism.”...

Students in New York City are so right-on to protest David Petraeus’
appointment as a highly paid professor at the City University of New York. Gen.
Petraeus, retired from the Army in 2011 after a bloody reign in Iraq and
Afghanistan and who was director of the CIA for a year, is a rabid warmonger
and absolutely deserves to be thrown out of any educational institution....

On Oct. 24, community activists, students, members of the Occupy Wall Street
movement, labor unionists and underpaid workers from every industry will rally
to mark the 75th anniversary of the first minimum wage law. They will demand an
increase from the current federal hourly minimum wage of $7.25 to $15....

When Veolia Transportation committed an unfair labor practice lockout of 700
school bus drivers in Boston on Oct. 8 and suspended five leaders of
Steelworkers Local 8751, the city’s corporate media began attacking the
union leaders....

Since Oct. 8, the school bus drivers in Steelworkers Local 8751 have faced a continuously hostile barrage from anti-union employer Veolia, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Boston Public Schools officials and the corporate media. On Oct. 8, the school bus drivers refused to drive until Veolia agreed to meet to discuss the company’s failure to adhere to the collective bargaining agreement they signed on June 18, 2013....

The Arab American Action Network condemns the politically motivated arrest
and indictment of Rasmea Yousef Odeh, our beloved Associate Director. The 65
year old was arrested at her home yesterday by agents from the Department of
Homeland Security, alleging an immigration violation on a 20-year-old
application....

With the strike by the Bay Area Rapid Transit workers in only the second day, two BART workers were killed by a BART train. It is a tragic but totally preventable accident. Resolving safety issues has been high on the two unions’ demands from day one of the contract negotiations, but
BART management has refused to acknowledge that there were any safety issues. Furthermore, despite union objections, management had begun to conduct some crash courses to train BART management personnel to possibly run trains during the strike!...

Acting on behalf of a U.S. energy company, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
staged a surprise, early morning attack on an encampment of Elsipogtog First
Nation (Indigenous) protesters engaged in a prolonged struggle to stop shale
gas fracking on Mi’kmaq lands in New Brunswick, Canada....

Thursday, October 24, people across the country–fast food workers, immigrant workers, trade unionists, community activists, underpaid workers from every industry, progressive activists working on many issues, and members of the Occupy Wall Street movement – will mark the 75th anniversary of the minimum wage. Seventy-five years ago this Thursday, the first minimum wage in the U.S. went into effect. In the summer of 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The act mandated that, beginning on October 24 of that year, employers would have to pay a minimum of at least 25 cents an hour to most workers....

Seventy-five years ago this Thursday, the first minimum wage in the U.S. went into effect. In the summer of 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The act mandated that, beginning on October 24 of that year, employers would have to pay a minimum of at least 25 cents an hour to most workers. This first minimum wage was an important part of the groundbreaking New Deal legislation. It came into being as a result of many years of struggle on the part of a growing labor movement and the mass movement of poorly paid and brutally exploited workers during the economic depression of the 1930s. Seventy-five years ago, the government and big business was finally forced to recognize that the people would no longer allow millions of workers to live on starvation wages, while the super-rich 1% enjoyed bigger and bigger profits.
...

October 15 Ad Hoc Coalition to hold Press Conference at the Colombian Consulate to express support for the peace process in Colombia and call for an end to union repression in that country. The case of unionist Huber Ballesteros will be highlighted. Solidarity with the social justice movement in Colombia will also be expressed....

From the United States, women who belong to the National Women's Fightback Network of the International Action Center send a warm and caring embrace to the brave people of Syria and especially to the women. It is the women and the
children who suffer most from the impact of wars....

Historical events were plentiful in Colombia this past year: agricultural
strikes, peace negotiations, people’s assemblies, large student
demonstrations — in short, dynamism in social movements. Although the
upsurge has not been massive enough to change the balance of power, it has been
enough to give everyone a glimpse of the path toward hope for this
country’s people, for whom hope up to now has been denied....

Every day, USW Local 8751 members in Boston are experiencing more and
increasing disrespect from Veolia management, including constant suspensions
and threats based on bogus allegations and constant harrassment, including
suspension of 5 union leaders and officers. ...

Articles in the capitalist press say that big business is
losing its sway with the Republican Party. But this is a false way to view
what’s happening. Big business has lost control of a right-wing
ideological faction in the House of Representatives that big business created
in the first place....

Once part of the massive and financially troubled Vivendi Universal empire,
in 2002 the company name was changed to Veolia to serve as the umbrella brand
for its water, environmental services, energy services and transport divisions.
In a further attempt to distance itself from Vivendi’s notoriety, Veolia
has established numerous small companies under different names in different
countries....

A giant transnational corporation’s grinding attack on
a militant union in Boston has led to an explosion of struggle. The
workers’ action has already begun to attract support from class-conscious
workers and unionists around Boston, the U.S. and the world who are determined
to stop union busting. The conflict continues into its second week....

Before the sun could rise over Boston on Tuesday, Oct. 8,
the rank-and-file members of United Steelworkers Local 8751 were taking a stand
against what they called the unfair and illegal practices of Veolia
Transportation, Inc....

The movement in Colombia has issued a worldwide call to progressives, unionists and justice loving people everywhere to support the peace process in Colombia. The International Day of Solidarity is a Call to Action issued by Colombian organizations, FENSUAGRO and Lazos de Dignidad. FENSUAGRO is Colombia's largest agricultural workers union. Its Vice President, Huber Ballesteros was arrested and charged with 'aggravated rebellion', and is symbolic of the ominous repression against Colombia's union and progressive movement. Colombia has endured a social, political and armed conflict for more than 50 years. Almost 220,000 people - almost all civilians - have died in the violence. Millions have been displaced from their homes....

The Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly and the “We Deserve Better” Workers Assembly have voted and consented at our recent organizers meeting to endorse and attend a protest this Friday, Oct 11th called by Local 17 of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) who initiated a rally and protest of the government shut down. They are inviting all community groups, other workers and unions, students and activists to bring signs and join the protest....

Beginning at 2 p.m. on Oct. 3, all the ruling-class media ran nonstop
coverage about a car chase that took place in the heavy security area of
Washington, D.C. The chase involved a driver who crashed gates in front of
the White House and on Capitol Hill. Cameras focused on a full mobilization of
D.C. Metropolitan and Capitol Hill police, along with the FBI and other armed
federal agencies....

The movement in Colombia has issued a worldwide call to progressives, unionists and justice loving people everywhere to support the peace process in Colombia.
The International Day of Solidarity is a Call to Action issued by Colombian organizations, FENSUAGRO and Lazos de Dignidad. FENSUAGRO is Colombia's largest agricultural workers union. Its Vice President, Huber Ballesteros was
arrested and charged with 'aggravated rebellion', and is symbolic of the ominous repression against Colombia's union and progressive movement.
Colombia has endured a social, political and armed conflict for more than 50 years. Almost 220,000 people - almost all civilians - have died in the violence. Millions have been displaced from their homes....

In solidarity with the 75th Anniversary of the passing of the minimum wage law there will be a massive direct action to support raising the minimum wage to at least 15 dollars for all workers. All groups, movements and organizations are welcome to help us organize for this great day of action scheduled for Herald Sq at 4 pm on Oct. 24th.
...

James Earl Rivera was only 16 years old and unarmed
when he was shot to death by two Stockton police officers, Gregory Dunn and
Eric Azarvand, and San Joaquin County Sheriff John Nesbitt. A total of 48
rounds hit the van that James was driving on July 22, 2010, including 18 that
pierced his body. The coroner’s report found that the lethal shot was to
his head....

Cupboards will be bare next year for nearly 4 million people in the United
States if the bill cutting the food stamp program, which was passed by the
Republican majority in the House on Sept. 19, becomes law. They voted to cut
this life-saving program by $40 billion over 10 years....

August 28, the National
Intelligence Service (NIS), formerly known as the Korean CIA, raided the
offices and homes of the Unified Progressive Party, which holds six seats in
South Korea’s National Assembly. Three members were arrested during the
raids, and lawmaker Lee Seok-ki was later stripped of immunity and placed under
arrest....

Whether he shows his face in Los Angeles or New York, David Petraeus —
the retired general who commanded U.N. and U.S. troops in Afghanistan and then
served as head of the CIA — has to confront protesters who call him a
mass murderer, war criminal and liar....

Sept. 30 — Activists in this beleaguered city are in the final days of
organizing for an International People’s Assembly Against the Banks and
Against Austerity. It is set for Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 5 and 6, at Grand
Circus Park in downtown Detroit. The event coincides with the Oct. 5 five-year
anniversary of the federal bailout that netted the biggest banks more than $700
billion in workers’ tax monies....

Marissa Alexander, the 34-year-old African-American woman who was sentenced
to 20 years in prison for defending herself against her former abusive spouse,
has been granted a new trial. This announcement came 12 days after a Sept. 14
Nationwide Day of Rallies for Marissa Alexander. Many cities held support
actions demanding “Let’s get her out!”

Even before this call was made on Facebook, thousands of people here and
around the world signed petitions and held numerous protests — including
the youth-led Dream Defenders who sat in at the Florida State Capitol this
summer — demanding that her outrageous conviction be overturned....

It’s now time for the rest of us to step up to the plate and make the fight to raise workers’ wages, to demand a $15 an hour minimum wage a major political issue.; By doing this we give those workers who are fighting on the job the important support they need and we spread this beyond the doors of McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, beyond Walmart and the big box stores, to all workers who need this a raise more than ever....

Over the next few weeks heads of state and foreign ministers from predatory
imperialist countries and developing nations trying to defend their sovereignty
will take the podium at the United Nations when the General Assembly
convenes....

With the U.S. government keeping both massive bombing and
regime change “on the table” for Syria in mid-September, we from
the International Action Center and others among the anti-war forces in the
U.S. believed it important to organize a delegation to visit this small country
now facing imperialist attack....

On Sept. 20, a liberal media voice in Miami, National Public Radio station
WLRN, aired a “news” discussion about the Cuban 5 after another
program on the same station cancelled an earlier interview about Stephen
Kimber’s new book: “What Lies Across the Water: the Real Story of
the Cuban Five.” Kimber’s website quoted the original program
host/producer concluding that “the topic is too ‘incendiary’
and [he] fears a negative reaction from certain segments of the
community.” A quick reversal came after a press release from the
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 made the censorship
known....

Haiti and the huge problems facing its people have dropped out of the news
recently. The Washington Post and the New York Times call the reason
“donor fatigue.” However, that doesn’t mean the tremendous difficulties Haiti faced before the January 2010 earthquake, which were worsened by that disaster, have lessened. It only means the big-business press have stopped talking about them....

Billows of smoke emanated from the Westgate shopping
mall in Nairobi, Kenya, on the third day of a standoff among Kenyan, Israeli
and U.S. FBI forces against members of the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance
movement based in Somalia, which had seized the mall. Reports indicated that at least 62 people have been killed since the incident began on Sept. 21, most of them civilian mall shoppers....

A significant turnout of nearly 1,000 anti-war demonstrators, most from the
Syrian-American community, marched in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9, the day
that the U.S. Congress reconvened and the day before President Barack Obama
withdrew the war resolution against Syria. The first topic on Congress’
agenda was to discuss the resolution giving the executive authority to bomb
Syria. This was the last thing wanted by many of the Syrian-origin people
living in the U.S., and so they came to protest....

Capitalist propaganda has a peculiar way of turning reality on its head.
A case in point is the well-funded effort to defeat an anti-fracking ballot
initiative in Michigan. Hijacking the typical language of a bona fide mass
appeal for a progressive cause, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce claims that
“over the next year” it “will be building a grassroots force
that will trump any paid efforts by out-of-state individuals to ban hydraulic
fracturing in Michigan. We will be organizing rallies, events, and penning
letters to the editor. With your help, we can defeat this illogical
proposal.”...

A delegation of anti-war and human-rights activists from the United States
entered Syria Sept. 16 on a fact-finding and people-to-people solidarity trip.
The participants plan to counter the ubiquitous pro-war propaganda spread in
the U.S. and NATO imperialist countries and former colonial powers that
demonizes the Syrian government....

Cubans festooned their island with yellow ribbons on Sept. 12, marking the
15th anniversary of the arrest of five Cuban men in Miami. Even the Washington
Post, which has ignored or been hostile to the campaign to free the Cuban 5,
published an Associated Press article that day headlined “Havana dresses
up with yellow ribbons in campaign to push for Cuban 5 agents’
release.”...

An anti-war delegation from the United States visited Syria the week of
Sept. 16 to see for themselves what is happening there. The delegation included
human rights lawyer and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Cynthia
McKinney, a former six-term congressperson from Georgia; Dedon Kamathi of the
All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and Pacifica Radio; and Johnny
Achi of Arab Americans 4 Syria in Los Angeles. The International Action Center,
which pulled together the delegation, sent key organizers John Parker from Los
Angeles and Sara Flounders from New York....

While most media coverage makes it look like the war danger has diminished,
Secretary of State John Kerry has made it clear that the threat of attack will
persist -- that it is still the U.S. strategic plan to remove Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad from power even if all Syrian chemical weapons are destroyed.
(Business Week, Sept. 16)
...

The anti-war movement is in a race with the Pentagon to stop the U.S. from
its goal -- pushed back momentarily -- of going to war with Syria. This urgency
is what made the International Action Center (IAC) send a delegation from the
United States to Syria. The IAC's Sara Flounders gives an audio report
(below) on the team's trip so far, featuring an on-air meeting with members
of "Over Our Dead Bodies" -- the youth encampment of hundreds of
voluntary human shields at Syria's communications centers....

We call on all activists fighting banker-imposed austerity – here in the
U.S. and worldwide – to come to Detroit, Michigan, on October 5 and 6,
2013. Join the people of this city under siege in convening the International
People’s Assembly Against the Banks and Against Austerity.
...

President Barack Obama and the White House are struggling
mightily to override global and domestic opposition to a military adventure in
Syria by trying to get Congress to vote for war. Washington is pulling out all the stops. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough went on all five Sunday morning television shows to push the war. Obama is appearing on six major TV networks tonight and will make a major speech tomorrow, all to try to reverse a growing momentum against the Syrian adventure....

Detroiters are mobilizing to defend city workers’ pensions and city
services in the wake of the municipal bankruptcy filed by Emergency Manager
Kevyn Orr. This Wall Street bankruptcy attorney was appointed by
Michigan’s reactionary Gov. Rick Snyder to essentially act as a receiver
over the city, supplanting the elected mayor and City Council.

On Sept. 7, about 500 people attended a rally sponsored by U.S. Rep. John
Con­yers and chaired by Professor Michael Eric Dyson, with panelists
including the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP; City
Councilwoman Joann Watson; Al Garrett, president of American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25; and columnist Julianne
Malveaux. The speakers stressed the need for mass mobilization in the streets
to challenge the racist Wall Street attack on Detroit, a majority
African-American city....

Journalist Nick Turse’s study, entitled “AFRICOM’s
Gigantic ‘Small Footprint,’” reviews the increasing role of
the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) at TomDispatch.com. It illustrates
why this issue should become a major focus of Western peace, anti-war and
anti-imperialist movements. Little attention has been paid to imperialist
interventions in the oppressed African nations....

In this age of horribly destructive weapons and the ability of U.S.
government agencies to pore over everyone’s private communications
— if they are digitized, as most are — there is a tendency to
regard the capitalist state as all-powerful, a juggernaut that can roll over
everyone if it wants....

On the eve of the United Nations High-Level Dialogue on Migration and
Development (UN HLD) in October 2013, migrants around the world will launch
Millions Migrants Mobilizing Worldwide or 3MW, a global cultural campaign
consisting of a choreographed line dance to an original song highlighting the
root causes of forced migration and the issues migrants and refugees face
everyday, such as family separation, labor exploitation, wage theft, detention,
deportation, criminalization and discrimination....

The President's speech Tuesday night repeated all of the lies the United
States has been telling about Syria to justify war -- and shows that war may be
delayed, but is not off the table. The biggest lie being told right now is that
Assad agreed to give up his country's chemical weapons because of the
United States' "credible military threat." What has really happened is that the warmakers in the Pentagon, and their
backers on Wall Street, ran into a gigantic brick wall of resistance. They were
forced to back down for the time being. They wanted to go to war right now. But
when Kerry said on Monday, "All Assad has to do is give up his chemical
weapons," Syria and Russia called his bluff.
...

At this critical moment, the number one priority for organized labor must be to publicly, unequivocally, and loudly oppose the president’s plans to attack Syria. Understandably, the question of another war, this one against Syria, was likely not on the agenda of the AFL-CIO convention beginning this weekend in Los Angeles. Recent events, however, have changed everything and there’s no point in pretending that the situation is the same as before. If the plans to attack Syria are denounced from the podium of the labor
convention, this would mean that organized labor has risen to the challenge of
becoming the militant, thoroughly progressive, independent movement of working people in the United States. Not to do it would reduce the leadership of the AFL-CIO to providing cover for the president’s war plans....

We, the member organizations of the International Women’s
Alliance, raise our collective voices against the impending interventionist war
that the United States is planning to wage against the Syrian people.

The U.S. Senate’s recent approval of a punitive missile strike on
Syria constitutes a direct act of aggression masquerading as humanitarian
action. Despite widespread opposition from the international community and lack
of authorization from the United Nations, the U.S. remains hell-bent on
attacking Syria, even as reports show that Syrian rebels funded by the Saudi
government — a close U.S. ally — were the ones responsible for the
March 19 simultaneous chemical assaults in Aleppo and Ataybah, which left
approximately 26 people including 16 Syrian soldiers dead, with 86 more
seriously injured....

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee narrowly approved an attack on Syria.
But the resolution the committee passed leaped from "limited air
strikes" to 90 days of bombardment. This is an ominous escalation.
Remember "the Iraq supplement"? George W. Bush was required to get
Congressional funding for the war every 90 days. Once war started, Congress
never asserted itself again. That war lasted seven-and-a-half years, cost $4
trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives -- and isn't really over.
Kerry admitted to Congress on Monday that the vow of "no boots on the
ground" isn't firm. "I don't want to take off the table an
option that might or might not be available to a president of the United
States."...

We call on all activists fighting banker-imposed austerity – here in the
U.S. and worldwide – to come to Detroit, Michigan, on October 5 and 6,
2013. Join the people of this city under siege in convening the International
People’s Assembly Against the Banks and Against Austerity.
...

On Sept. 3, Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, brokers for
the Pentagon hawks, met with President Obama and came away saying that they now
support plans for missile strikes against Syria. Graham said the attacks
were going to be “a little more robust” than he had thought. There
was talk of attacks on Syrian aircraft, artillery and rockets, and assurances
from Obama that the attacks would be aimed at “shifting the momentum on
the battlefield.” McCain called the meeting “encouraging” and
said it would be “catastrophic” not to support the strikes....

On Aug. 28, with Washington, London and Paris apparently on the verge of
opening up another very unpopular and dangerous war by firing missiles at
Syria, anti-war activists in the U.S. and around the world went to the streets
before the rockets were launched....

Anti-war, anti-imperialist and Syrian-American organizations
inside the U.S. all see the coming week as the last chance to mobilize popular
resistance to a military strike on Syria. Polls show the people are very
worried about the political and economic consequences of another costly war,
but this sentiment must be organized to affect the outcome....

Join in to stop the attack on Syria. The coming days provide the last chance to
mobilize popular resistance to the military strike. The people fear both the
political and economic consequences of another costly war. Millions believe the
pretext for the war is another Big Lie like the lies used before the Vietnam,
Iraq and Libya wars. We need to join together to loudly oppose this new war.
...

Syrian Americans are agonizing for their country and their families. Syrian Americans are tormented for their adopted country, the US. Syrians all over the world are bleeding, morally and literally....

In 1973, fascist terror orchestrated by the U.S. government in Chile led to the crushing of a genuine revolutionary people’s struggle that was sweeping the country. A progressive, popular and beloved leader, Salvador Allende, had been elected President.
...

President Obama has called for a vote in Congress to authorize an attack on Syria. Congress is scheduled to return on Monday, Sept 9. President Obama is using the same tactics as President Bush did before the Iraq War. When the UN Security Council would not support the U.S. war, Bush turned to the U.S. Congress for a war vote giving him “all necessary means”. Ten years later Iraq lay in ruins. A million Iraqis died, millions became refugees. More than 1.5 million US soldiers were deployed to Iraq. Today thousands of U.S. and NATO soldiers are disabled, traumatized and 1/3 will suffer from PTSD. Just as in Iraq, Afghanistan and earlier in Vietnam this is again a U.S. war based on lies. Bombing Syria is NOT a 'humanitarian intervention’. It is another war for Wall Street Profit! This time there is a risk of global confrontation or even world war. This war will only serve the billionaires and militarists who profit from war and conquest. The workers and poor will pay, in Syria and here in the U.S.

The IAC along with HondurasUSAResistencia and other national solidarity
organizations, including the Honduras Solidarity Network are organizing a
delegation to Honduras in solidarity with the resistance movement. We will be
eye-witnesses for the historic presidential election that is scheduled to take
place on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. The Presidential candidate is Xiomara Castro
Zelaya, a leader of the resistance, and a union and also a resistance leader
for Vice President, Juan Barahona.
...

Barack Obama’s speech today, delivered from the White
House Rose Garden, was aimed at winning the acquiescence of the war-weary and
austerity-clobbered people in the United States for an illegal, aggressive and
highly dangerous assault on the sovereign nation of Syria....

President Obama is using the same tactics as President Bush did before the Iraq War. When the UN Security Council would not support the U.S. war, Bush turned to the U.S. Congress for a war vote giving him “all necessary means”. Ten years later Iraq lay in ruins. A million Iraqis died, millions became refugees. More than 1.5 million US soldiers were deployed to Iraq. Today thousands of U.S. and NATO soldiers are disabled, traumatized and 1/3 will suffer from PTSD. Just as in Iraq, Afghanistan and earlier in Vietnam this is again a U.S. war based on lies. Bombing Syria is NOT a 'humanitarian intervention’. It is another war for Wall Street Profit! This time there is a risk of global confrontation or even world war. ...

The People’s Power Assembly Movement held a press conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall in Manhattan today to announce a march and rally on Aug. 28 with the main demand: “Stop the racist war on youth of color.”...

Without presenting even a hint of proof of Washington’s allegations that Syria has used poison gas, Secretary of State John Kerry has announced that a rocket attack on the sovereign state of Syria from four U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean is imminent....

Yesterday we sent email alerts urging activists to begin mobilizing for what has long been known as 'Day After' protests against a US military strike. But it is important that across the country everyone opposed to still another US war find ways to raise their opposition now, BEFORE another criminal US war is unleashed with cruise missiles and a barrage of war propaganda and cynical lies of 'humanitarian concern'. In NYC, Chicago, Dearborn MI, Los Angeles, Washington DC and several other cities, there are plans for immediate protests this Wed and Thurs....

The International Action Center along with Honduras USA Resistencia and other national solidarity organizations, including the Honduras Solidarity Network, are organizing a delegation to Honduras in solidarity with the resistance movement. The delegation will be eyewitnesses for the historic presidential election that is scheduled to take place on Nov. 24. The presidential candidate is Xiomara Castro Zelaya, a leader of the resistance, and the vice-presidential candidate is Juan Barahona, a union and also a resistance leader....

Before we discuss any of the details of the latest Big Lie, The IAC denounces any missile or air attack on Syria as an international war crime. We call upon all anti-war forces in the United States to stand up to say “No!” to this act of aggression.

U.S. imperialism is poised to open another war. This one, the latest in a long series of aggressive wars, would target Syria. As we write, four U.S. destroyers, each with 90 cruise missiles, are moving into place in the eastern Mediterranean to be able to launch these death-dealers at the Syrian people. As with earlier major U.S. aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, Washington has presented a Big Lie to try to justify an unwarranted and illegal assault on the Syrian people.With Yugoslavia, the claim, shown later to be false, was that the Serbian government was committing “genocide” against Albanian-ethnic people in Kosovo. In Libya, Moammar Gadhafi’s government was alleged to be on the verge of committing a bloodbath in Benghazi — another Big Lie invented by U.S.-NATO forces. And we all know that no “weapons of mass destruction” were found in Iraq....

The International Anti-imperialist Coordinating Committee (IACC) condemns the persistent efforts of the imperialist powers to destabilize Syria and oust the present Government of President Bashar el-Assad. They hatched a conspiracy to instigate some anti-Government forces to start an armed conflict against the legitimate Government led by President Assad....

The current campaign of massacres and repression
launched by the Egyptian military constitutes a new and bloody chapter in the
decades-long war by the generals against the Muslim Brotherhood. But it
is more than that...

Troubled children often create imaginary friends and secret worlds to cope
with impossible realities. But what if imaginary friends became real and secret
worlds could be visited? “Beyond the Horse’s Eye: A Fantasy Out of Time” by Janet Rose is built around a fascinating concept: Empathy for all living things can be channeled into a powerful energy force. This exciting read is wise and full of intuition about pain, survival, rehabilitation and change. Science fiction is a very political medium in which hopes can be projected onto another galaxy or another dimension. With analogies and fantasy, it enables readers to envision the world they want and perhaps to formulate how to get there....

A national call for Justice for Trayvon Martin assemblies in U.S. cities on
Aug. 28, initiated by the People’s Power Assembly Movement, could not have come at a more crucial juncture. The devastating “not-guilty” verdict that came down on July 13 in the Sanford, Fla., trial of wannabe cop, George Zimmerman, in the Feb. 26, 2012, fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was not only a blatant travesty of justice for this young African American. It was another wake-up call about the heinous racist war on people of color, especially the youth. The verdict was also a grim reminder that, especially with growing unemployment, Black, Brown and Indigenous young people’s lives are viewed as totally expendable by the powers-that-be and their legal and extralegal apparatus like the police, the courts, the prisons and vigilantes like Zimmerman....

Once again, the Egyptian masses have taken history’s center stage. In
what some are calling the greatest outpouring of humanity in history, the
people in Egypt took to the streets in the millions for five days, beginning
June 30, in a show of no confidence in the Morsi government and to demand their
right to food, shelter, justice, dignity and freedom from repression....

The latest massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters demonstrating in Cairo
was ordered by the U.S.-trained Egyptian generals who had earlier carried out
the military coup that ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi.

This bloody slaughter, along with the appointment of 17 Army and two police
generals as governors of the 27 Egyptian governorates, plus the coup
regime’s declaration of a one-month “state of emergency,”
should wipe out any remaining doubts about the ousting of Morsi. It was an
outright military coup. His democratic right to govern based on an election has
far more legitimacy than any general’s diktat....

A federal court here declared on Aug. 12 that the New York Police
Department’s stop-and-frisk program was unconstitutional. The ruling in
Floyd v. City of New York followed a class-action case brought by four men of
color....

The momentum for Aug. 28 Trayvon Martin Justice Assemblies is building every
day from New York City to El Paso, Texas to Los Angeles, California. With Aug.
28 just a few weeks away, the Peoples Power Assembly movement would like to
gather and centralize as much information as possible on what is being
organized in your local area. Please click here or go to
peoplespowerassemblies.org - list your event to enter a summary of your event
by Friday, Aug 16 including your city or town, time, location and sponsors of
your event along with contact information. It will be posted the PPA website at
peoplespowerassemblies.org - activities. This will allow others in your area to
organize and support for your event. These assemblies can take the form of
various protests including marches, rallies, speak outs, direct action, press
conferences, block parties and more to help unite the struggles and movements.
...

U.S. and European diplomats, along with emissaries from Saudi
Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have descended on Cairo to consult
with Egyptian generals and Muslim Brotherhood leaders in an attempt to find a
path to political and social stability after the brutal military coup
d’état of July 3....

Family members and supporters of Ramarley Graham rallied in front of the
Bronx District Attorney’s office on Aug. 8 to express outrage at
yesterday’s grand jury decision not to re-indict Graham’s killer,
New York Police Department Officer Richard Haste. They also rallied on
Aug. 9 and 10 in the Bronx....

Trayvon Martin has become the face of the many young people of color — like Ramarley Graham, Shaaliver Douse, ­Kimani Gray, Shantel Davis and countless others — who have been stopped-and-frisked and sometimes beaten and killed by the police who never see one day of jail time for these crimes against humanity. The police and the courts have created racially motivated drug laws that have been used as an excuse to incarcerate a huge percentage of young generations of Black and Brown youth. These same youth have the highest unemployment rate, and the jobs they are forced to take are low-wage jobs without benefits, rights or union representation. The anti-youth war also includes massive cuts in education, including school closings in Black and Brown communities. We must turn our anger over the lynching of Trayvon Martin into a new nationwide struggle to stop the war against Black and Brown youth in New York City and elsewhere....

To clarify the injustice in the verdict finding Pfc. B. Manning guilty of 20
of the charges against this anti-war hero, contrast it with the record of real
war criminal George W. Bush. To keep it simple, examine their role regarding
only the U.S. war against Iraq....

Despite U.S. threats to retaliate, the Russian Federation government on Aug.
1 granted whistle-blower Edward Snowden temporary sanctuary. Snowden left
Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, where he has spent the last 39 days, to move
into an apartment. He has already been offered employment at VKontakte, a
Russian social network website. (New York Times, Aug. 1)...

The World is Ours” reads the shirt of Phillip
Agnew and his other Dream Defenders, who have been holding down and controlling
the Florida state Capitol for the past 20 days. Twenty days of demonstrations
in the Capitol, workshops in the governor’s office, and serious talk
about revolution and social justice. Twenty days of sleeping on a marble floor,
eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and playing the card game UNO until
late at night – all to pressure Florida Gov. Rick Scott to call to
session the absent Florida Legislature to pass the Trayvon Martin Civil Rights
Act. The Dream Defenders started their occupation on July 16....

Lynne Stewart's condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to
arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she
is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell
count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection. The U.S. Bureau
of Prisons has unjustly denial Lynne Stewart’s request for compassionate
release. This denial is being challenged both legally by Lynne and by the
demonstration of people power on the streets of New York City, Los Angeles,
Washington D.C. The court hearing could result in Lynne's conditional
release by Judge Koeltl, so it is crucial that the court sees the love and
support that Lynne has.

Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — Even on
normal days, this magnificent city proudly wears its history on its sleeve.
There are monuments and buildings everywhere dedicated to the almost
unimaginable sacrifices the Korean people have made to safeguard their
independence from would-be conquerors....

Despite CIA coordination of training operations in Jordan and safe havens in
Turkey and despite countless reports in the corporate media of the imminent
surrender of a panicked Syrian government, the more than two-year intense
effort to overthrow the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is
collapsing....

Ho Chi Minh, anti-colonial leader of the Vietnamese people, states in the
opening paragraph of his 1924 powerful essay, “Lynchings”:
“It is well known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most
exploited of the human family. It is well known that the spread of capitalism
and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate result the rebirth of
slavery, which was for centuries a scourge for the Negroes and a bitter
disgrace for mankind....

In response to the freeing of George
Zimmerman, the killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was stalked and shot
to death simply because he was young, Black and male, the students of color
group — the Dream Defenders — have been sitting in and sleeping
over in the Florida Statehouse here since July 16....

Lynne Stewart's condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to
arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she
is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell
count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection. Send a message
to Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels Jr. that he must reverse his
decision. Long-time National Lawyers Guild member and activist lawyer Lynne
Stewart needs our help and she needs it now! The Federal Bureau of Prisons has
denied Lynne Stewart's application for compassionate release, despite
recommendations in favor from the warden at her facility, the Regional Office
Director, and vetting of Stewart's release plans by the Federal Probation
Office in New York....

Statement released on July 27 by the Dream Defenders who have been holding a sit-in at Gov. Rick Scott's office in Tallahassee, Fla. since July 16, three days after the ‘no-guilty’ verdict of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin:...

City of Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, the figurehead named by
reactionary Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to run Detroit and usurp its elected
political officials, filed a Chapter 9 bankruptcy on July 18, the largest
municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Orr claims that the city is unable to pay its approximately $20 billion in
debt out of city revenues. Orr’s June 14 Proposal for Creditors and the
bankruptcy petition itself make it clear that the bankruptcy’s real goal
is to gut the pensions and benefits of Detroit’s over 20,000 retirees.
Most of the debt to the banks that caused Detroit’s financial crisis is
considered “secure debt,” to be paid despite the bankruptcy
filing....

The Southern African nation of Zimbabwe will hold “harmonized
elections” on July 31. Registered voters will select local and national
representatives for legislative and administrative positions. This process is
the culmination of nearly five years of negotiations that grew out of the
crisis that developed around elections held in 2008....

Much has been written exposing the inherent racist nature of the so-called
U.S. justice system and how the “not guilty’” verdict of the
killer of Trayvon Martin is a perfect example of this. That George Zimmerman
and his lawyers maintained that he was merely defending himself when he fatally
shot an unarmed teenager has not only unleashed outrage for justice for Martin,
but also highlighted countless local cases of people of color sent to jail for
justifiably defending themselves....

While the corporate media covered every word, gesture and animated cartoon
promoting the defense of Trayvon Martin’s killer, it paid little
attention to whistleblower Pfc. B. Manning’s defense. They did report
that military trial judge, Col. Denise Lind, ruled July 18 that Manning could
face “aiding the enemy” charges....

On Wed., August 28, after we’ve marched in Washington on Aug. 24 to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the great march against racism in
Washington, D.C., led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the
People’s Power Assembly Movement calls on activists across the U.S. to
hold local JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON MARTIN ASSEMBLIES, including rallies,
speak-outs, marches in public squares or in front of federal buildings or local
police headquarters.
...

The reaction to the July 13 “not-guilty” verdict
for racist vigilante, George Zimmerman — who fatally shot unarmed
17-year-old, Trayvon Martin, last year in Sanford, Fla. — continues to
evoke various kinds of protests all over the U.S., including in Florida....

Rallies, vigils, sit-ins and marches have continued across
the United States in response to the July 13 jury verdict acquitting racist
vigilante George Zimmerman in the 2012 slaying of Black youth Trayvon Martin in
Sanford, Fla....

The strong response in opposition to the July 13 “not-guilty”
verdict for racist vigilante, George Zimmerman -- who fatally shot unarmed
17-year-old, Trayvon Martin, last year in Sanford, Fla. – prompted a
group of mainly Black and Brown youth activists – the Dream
Defenders – to occupy the office of Gov. Rick Scott in Florida's
state Capitol in Tallahassee, on July 16. A week later the occupation is still going
strong....

Musical Performers by: Neri Olivares, The Bolivarian Brigade, DJ Mellow G
This year we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the mass struggle
that led to the victory of the Cuban Revolution. On July 26, 1953, some 160 men
and women, led by Fidel Castro and Abel Santamaria, launched attacks on the
Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the nearby Bayamo garrison. The
attacks failed and dozens of the rebels were murdered after capture and
horrible torture, or were jailed. But the action paved the way for a
revolutionary war led by the July 26 Movement, culminating in a popular
insurrection that toppled the US-supported Batista dictatorship on January 1,
1959....

Since Washington has already ordered the employment of air piracy in its
attempts to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden, no country has subsequently
offered to fly him out of Russia, where he has been trapped for three weeks at
Moscow’s airport....

On July 8, the self-styled “National Coalition for Syrian
Revolutionary and Opposition Forces” met once again under U.S. direction
in neighboring Turkey. But instead of it bringing greater unity, “Prime
Minister” in exile Ghassan Hitto resigned his position. Hitto is a U.S.
citizen....

The ongoing anger of the oppressed African-American masses
and all anti-racist, justice-loving people across the United States continues
to spread. These spontaneous protests are sending a strong message to the White
House, the truly criminal “justice” system, the corporate moguls on
Wall Street and their representatives everywhere that racism and denial of
justice will not be tolerated. When news of the “not guilty” jury verdict for George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was released around 10 p.m. Eastern time on July 13, shock, sadness, rage and action spread quickly all over the country....

When news of the “not guilty” jury verdict
for George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin came
down around 10 p.m. Eastern time the night of July 13, shock, rage and action
spread quickly among justice-loving and anti-racist people across the United
States. Despite the assertion of President Barack Obama in a statement that
“we are a nation of laws and a jury has spoken” and appeals from
him and other leaders for “calm,” righteous anger and plans for
protest actions spread quickly around the country....

Plan to hold justice assemblies in downtown squares, in communities, at schools
and at busy street corners in your city or town. Distribute flyers; hold youth
and community speak outs, marches and protests. The murder of Trayvon Martin
should be generalized with other local cases of atrocities against youth,
especially youth of color. It's critical at this moment for the movement to
define this issue rather than the big business media or those who have little
interest in defending Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and poor youth. We are
issuing this emergency call because the justice system has failed....

Plan to hold justice assemblies in downtown squares, in communities, at schools
and at busy street corners in your city or town. Distribute flyers; hold youth
and community speak outs, marches and protests. The murder of Trayvon Martin
should be generalized with other local cases of atrocities against youth,
especially youth of color. It's critical at this moment for the movement to
define this issue rather than the big business media or those who have little
interest in defending Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and poor youth. We are
issuing this emergency call because the justice system has failed.
...

Reactionary politicians are brazenly trying to push through
anti-reproductive rights bills in several states but they are being strongly
resisted by protesters inside and outside the legislatures. Women are standing
up and voicing their opposition to the attacks on their rights and health
care....

A National Call to all groups & individuals: If George Zimmerman WALKS or
is convicted on a lesser charge. Plan to hold justice assemblies in downtown squares, in communities, at schools
and at busy street corners in your city or town. Distribute flyers; hold youth
and community speak outs, marches and protests. The murder of Trayvon Martin
should be generalized with other local cases of atrocities against youth,
especially youth of color. It's critical at this moment for the movement to
define this issue rather than the big business media or those who have little
interest in defending Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and poor youth.
...

George Zimmerman, the racist vigilante killer of Trayvon Martin, has
launched a campaign through his lawyers to smear his victim. He wants to
portray Martin, and indeed every Black youth, as a criminal gangster deserving
of the death sentence that he, in fact, meted out to the unarmed 17-year-old on
Feb. 26, 2012, in the gated community of Sanford, Fla....

When Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected president
of the United States in 2008, many bourgeois pundits proclaimed that the U.S.
could finally move toward becoming a “post-racial” society. This
notion was reinforced when Obama was reelected in 2012....

The struggle to win compassionate release for the imprisoned,
cancer-stricken people’s lawyer, Lynne Stewart, is still very much in the
forefront of the progressive movement’s agenda.

The 73-year-old Stewart is currently in her fourth year of serving a 10-year
sentence in Carswell Federal Prison in Fort Worth, Texas, on a fabricated
“aiding terrorism” conviction for legally representing Sheik Omar
Abdel Rahman, who was falsely imprisoned for “sedition” in the 1995
bombing of the World Trade Center....

An unprecedented outpouring of millions of Egyptians from all across the
country has shown that the Egyptian revolution is not only alive but is on the
rise. Having accomplished the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak by protracted
mobilization, enormous heroism and great sacrifice, the masses have once again
come into the streets to demand the fulfillment of the revolution that they
fought for in 2011....

Pan American
International High School will be without any African-American teachers next
year, because two teachers have been fired after a Queens Principal, Minerva
Zanca, made racist comments about them in closed-door meetings with her
assistant principal.The third African-American teacher is leaving the
school because of severe budget cuts to her hugely successful Theater program
which were racially motivated. ...

The International Action Center expresses its
outrage at the international crime committed by the U.S. imperialist government
and its NATO allies in Europe in denying a refueling stop to the plane carrying
Bolivian President Evo Morales home from an energy conference in Moscow.This
plane was refused overflight permission by France, Spain, Italy and Portugal on
July 2 while in the air....

The 9th Annual Trans Day of Action took place in New York City on June 28,
called by TransJustice, a political group created by and for trans and gender
non-conforming people of color (TGNC POC). Endorsed by more than 100
organizations, the rally and march, which began at the Christopher Street
Piers, celebrated the long history of political activism of trans and gender
non-conforming people and also addressed the growing poverty and rise of
anti-trans bashings, especially toward women....

On Christopher Street in New York City, the Stonewall Inn opened early on
the morning of June 26. At this small, working-class bar in late June 1969, a rebellion against
police raids gave rise to the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
queer movement. Now, 44 years later and 10 years after that movement forced the
U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw “sodomy” laws that criminalized
homosexuality, a crowd gathered waiting for the news....

The White House’s June 13th announcement that it would begin directly
supplying arms to the opposition in Syria is a dramatic escalation of the
U.S./NATO war against that country. Thousands of U.S. troops and intelligence
personnel are training opposition forces and coordinating operations in Turkey
and Jordan. Israel, the recipient of more than $3 billion annually in U.S.
military aid, has carried out heavy bombing raids against Syria. The Pentagon
has developed plans for a “no-fly” zone over Syria, threatening a new U.S. air war....

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has DENIED Lynne Stewart’s
application for compassionate release. Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. took
this action despite recommendations for compassionate release from Federal
Medical Center, Carswell Warden Jody R. Upton and South Central Regional Office Director J.A. Keller, as well as the vetting of Stewart’s release plans by the Federal Probation Office in New York. The struggle to free Lynne Stewart continues on many fronts. First and foremost, each and every one of us must increase the number of people worldwide who sign the petition. Lynne Stewart’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to
arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell
count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection...

Lynne Stewart's husband Ralph Poynter
was informed by Lynne this morning that she received a three-paragraph letter
from Kathleen Kenney, General Counsel for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in
Washington, D.C. in which Compassionate Release has been denied on the grounds that Lynne's "health is improving."...

The following excerpted points of unity were initiated by TransJustice of
the Audre Lorde Project, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans and gender
non-conforming people of color center for community organizing....

The societal myth that the vast majority of LGBTQ-identified people in the
U.S. are white, affluent men who are disconnected from the day-to-day struggles
of working-class people has been completely debunked by a recent economic
study. The U.S. ruling class and the right wing use this myth to ostracize
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and economically separate
them from the rest of society....

There are many historical examples of progressive political candidates who
ran on a progressive platform or were buttressed by a political movement of
oppressed nationalities or by a general upsurge of workers and the oppressed.
However, the recent Jackson, Miss., mayoral election victory of outgoing
Black City Councilperson Chokwe Lumumba provides an opportunity for
revolutionaries and progressive people not only to analyze what the victory
means for Jackson, the Black Belt South, all oppressed peoples and in general
but also raises the specter of the need to defend Lumumba and the people of
Jackson, a city that is 80 percent Black, from right-wing reaction....

When the Free Fare Movement (MPL) in Sao Paolo, Brazil,
initiated a call on social media for a demonstration on June 6 to protest an
increase of public transport fares in the city, no one imagined the enormous
response it would elicit and its political repercussions....

An extraordinary anti-war forum entitled “Syria & Iran: The Next
War?” was held here June 10 at the Solidarity Center. It featured
anti-war veterans from the Iranian, Israeli and U.S. militaries, and was
organized by United for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace and the U.S.
Peace Council. The International Action Center hosted the meeting and IAC
co-founder Sara Flounders chaired. All the speakers were members of the VFP
Iran Working Group....

Lynne Stewart's husband Ralph Poynter was informed by Lynne this morning
that she received a three-paragraph letter from Kathleen Kenney, General
Counsel for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C. in which
Compassionate Release has been denied on the grounds that Lynne's
"health is improving." This claim is at once cynical and false.Lynne
Stewart's cancer continues to spread in her lungs. She remains in isolation
as her white blood cell count remains so low that she is at risk for
generalized infection. She weakens daily. We call upon all committed to the
effort to secure Lynne Stewart's release and to save her life to stand by
for further notice of the response from Lynne, her husband Ralph Poynter, her
family and her lawyers – announcing the next actions that we, her
supporters, will launch in response to this appalling betrayal of compassion
and justice.
...

Every minute's delay compromises Lynne Stewart's life and her access to the loving care of her family and the comprehensive treatment plan prepared for her at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York....

When Italian President Giorgio Napolitano met His Majesty King Abdullah II
last year in Jordan, he expressed “the high regard with which Italy
observes how the Hashemite dynasty has always pursued its desire for peace and
its moderate line.”...

After a series of meetings in Washington, the Obama administration escalated
the war against Syria by announcing that the United States would ship weapons
directly to their proxy rebels in Syria. The New York Times described this
materiel as “small arms and ammunition,” but added that the
transfers may include anti-tank weapons as well. (New York Times, June 14)...

CNY Solidarity marched loud and proud at Central
New York Pride on June 15. Youth activists organized and led the contingent.
The number of marchers participating in the group doubled from the 2012
march....

This year’s Pride march in downtown Detroit on June 9 raised a timely
slogan: “Marching toward equality.” Most lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer people in Michigan have no legal protection from
discrimination — they can be fired, evicted or denied access to public
accommodations such as restaurants, hotels or health clubs. Only 24 Michigan
cities have protective ordinances. The most recently passed ordinance, in the
Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, could be overturned by a right-wing ballot
initiative. An anti-marriage amendment to the state Constitution is one of the
country’s most restrictive....

Walmart workers across the United States resumed their strike at the end of
May and began caravaning toward Bentonville, Ark., the site of Walmart
headquarters and the company’s annual shareholders’ convention
scheduled for June 7. The morning of June 3 strikers and their supporters set
up picket lines in Bentonville....

The continuing campaign to gain Compassionate Release for Lynne Stewart -- the
grievously ill, imprisoned human rights attorney -- is headed to Washington,
D.C. Despite being approved for compassionate release, Stewart continues to be
held in Carswell Federal Prison in seriously deteriorating health. Lynne
Stewart’s spouse, the 79-year-old social justice activist Ralph Poynter,
will lead a continuing vigil in front of the White House starting on Monday,
June 17. Poynter urges all those concerned with justice, compassion and basic
human rights to join him whether they are available for an hour, for the day,
or for the duration. He will be at the White House and making visits to the
Federal Bureau of Prisons several blocks away, at 320 First St. NW, Washington
D.C., 20534....

On May 22, with cries of “That, that, that’s the way to
govern” and “They shall not return” (referring to the
right-wing oligarchy’s lust for power), the first graduating class of the
Jesus Rivero Bolivarian Workers University heard Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro’s proposal to create a Workers’ Militia in
workplaces around the country....

In a historic election, long-time Black political activist and civil rights
attorney Chokwe Lumumba was elected mayor of Jackson, Miss., on June 5, winning
a whopping 87 percent of the vote. For decades, Lumumba fought for the right to
self-determination for Black people. He was vice president of the Republic of
New Afrika, which demanded that the southeastern region of the U.S. be ruled
under the auspices of an independent Black government as part of reparations
for the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans and the continuing legacy of white
supremacy....

The following call was issued by Trans­Justice, a political group
for trans and gender nonconforming people of color. TransJustice, a project of
the Audre Lorde Project, “works to educate, agitate, and mobilize our
community and allies on pressing political issues we face.” ALP is a
lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-spirit and gender nonconforming people of
color community organizing center based in New York City....

To the cheers of thousands, queer liberation, anti-war, and Pfc. B. Manning
contingents marched in united fashion with the International Action
Center’s Stonewall Warriors in this year’s Boston Gay Pride March
on June 8. Banners and placards supporting wrongfully imprisoned
African-American transwoman CeCe MacDonald festooned the contingent.
Progressive African-American Boston City Councilor Charles Yancey, a candidate
for mayor, and openly gay Afro-Latino Francisco White, an at-large candidate
for City Council, marched along with the contingent....

he reactionary terrorist gangs trying to overturn the Syrian government of
Bashar al-Assad are near collapse after a military defeat in the town of Qusair
on the Lebanese border. Leading U.S. militarists — the most prominent
being Sen. John McCain — are attacking President Barack Obama for
allowing this collapse. The result: The Obama administration, without evidence,
claims Assad used chemical weapons. This pretext is his excuse to justify
providing small arms and ammunition to those he calls the
“rebels.”...

Please take time Wed-Thurs-Fri, June 12-14 to make calls for Lynne. An all-out effort is needed NOW! Your calls are having an impact. AND IF YOU CAN, JOIN RALPH POYNTER AT NOON ON MONDAY JUNE 17 IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE....

The crucial victory by the Syrian Arab Army against imperialist-backed
terrorist ‘rebels’ in Qusair, a town near the border with Lebanon,
has further disintegrated the military and political opposition to the
government of President Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, the threats against
Syria’s government by imperialist and reactionary monarchist powers, led
by the United States, are increasing....

While the White House orders the Pentagon to plan a no-fly zone over Syria
and the U.S. has troops at the ready in Jordan, for the past two years the CIA
has coordinated massive weapons shipments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey
with the aim of guaranteeing that a pro-U.S. regime comes to power, therefore
negating the Syrian people’s right to self-determination....

George Zimmerman, the racist vigilante killer of Trayvon Martin, has
launched a campaign through his lawyers to smear his victim. He wants to
portray Martin, and indeed every Black youth, as a criminal gangster deserving
of the death sentence that he, in fact, meted out to the unarmed 17-year-old on
Feb. 26, 2012, in the gated community of Sanford, Fla....

The battle for Qusair is shaping up to be a major turning
point in the Syrian war. The two sides, the imperialist-backed
“rebels” and the Syrian Arab Army troops loyal to President Bashar
al-Assad, are locked in heavy combat for this strategic city near the Lebanese
border....

René González, the first of the
Cuban Five to be released from U.S. jails, was the first speaker at the press
conference on May 30 in Washington, D.C., that opened the Second “Five
Days for the Five.” The purpose of this international event is to take up
the case of the Cuban Five and raise awareness about both this serious criminal
injustice and the overall criminal U.S. policy toward the Republic of Cuba....

Congratulations to every single person and organization that helped to make the
2013 Poor People’s Campaign March a tremendous success! For those who had
the privilege of participating it was truly historical. For those of you who
could not be there in person, but who sent your support and solidarity, you too
were there in every one of our footsteps. There is so much to write about that
inspired us: the courageous delegation of women from Selma, Alabama, who drove
the entire night -- after their bus was cancelled -- to be able to speak in
defense of voting rights, their rendition of Freedom Songs kept us marching and
marching; the young children and participants with disabilities, seniors who
walked with canes, who wouldn’t stop; the families and victims of police
terror, especially the tenacious and spirited group who came from the Justice
for Alan Blueford Coalition in Oakland, California; the group of occupy youth
and members of Guitarmy who marched all night; the organizers like Bob Ross,
Prince Georges County NAACP head, who helped keep the march going; the OUR
Walmart workers who inspired marchers to defy Walmart bosses and County Police
and set up a picket right at the Super Walmart’s doors....

On May 23, 61 percent of 1,400 voting members approved a measure to allow openly gay youth to participate in the Boy Scouts of America — one of the largest youth organizations in the U.S., with the participation of more than 2.6 million young people. The new membership policy, set to go into effect on Jan. 1, states that “no youth will be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”...

One month ago I made a request for compassionate release which was honored by the warden at Carswell Federal Medical Center.Today the papers are still on a desk in Washington, D.C. even though the terminal cancer that I have contracted requires expeditious action....

There is mythology of Western interventionism in Syria: The role of the
United States and other Western nations has been to bolster moderates within a
broad anti-government coalition fighting for freedom against a tyrannical
regime. As late as Feb. 28 of this year, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed
the U.S. was for the first time shipping “nonlethal aid” to the
Syrian opposition, a public position he has maintained through recent calls to
double aid to Syrian rebels and reach a goal of over a billion dollars in
international aid....

New York — A cabal of bourgeois higher education policy wonks, media
moguls and bankers have devised a scheme that undermines the academic
foundation of the 166-year-old City University of New York. CUNY is the largest
urban university in the United States and provides education to more than half
a million students on 24 campuses....

Republican politicians and
reactionary media outlets have joined the ultrarightist Tea Party types in an
all-out attack on the Internal Revenue Service and, by extension, on the Barack
Obama administration. Instead of meeting this unwarranted and unsubstantiated
attack head-on the way it deserves, the Democrats have caved in, forcing the
IRS to apologize to the rich ultrarightists....

On the afternoon of May 20, a force equal to 600 times the Hiroshima atomic
bomb’s power struck the city of Moore, Okla. The giant tornado, 1.3 miles
wide, cut a swath over 17 miles long, killing at least 24 people, ten of them
children, and injuring 327 others. Over 13,000 homes and other structures were
destroyed, with property damage expected to top $2 billion....

Despite many gains won through decades of struggle, members of the lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities are often victims of hate
crimes. When the crime becomes a murder, the victim is most likely a young
transgender woman of color. Three African-American transwomen were found
murdered, in April alone, in Baltimore; Oak Ridge, Fla.; and most recently in
Cleveland....

A period of rich ferment – the 1960s in the U.S. – with opposition
to the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the movement for sexual
liberation, revisited, as species beyond humans join forces with young
earthlings, now with empath power, and cooperate to change history. Worlds,
energy forms and loves collide with unexpected results. An exciting read that
is wise and full of intuitions on pain, survival, rehabilitation and change. --
Sara Flounders, Co-Director, International Action Center....

On May 3, the U.S. government falsely branded Assata Shakur … as a
“terrorist,” placing her name as the first woman on the most-wanted
terrorist list, with obvious alternative motives, but supposedly for the false
charges 40 years ago. This act is doubly scurrilous as it implies that Cuba, a
country that has suffered nearly 3,500 deaths from relentless U.S.-based
terrorist attacks since its revolution for sovereignty in 1959, harbors
“terrorists” because in the 1970s and 80s it gave Shakur and other
Black freedom fighters refuge. The National Network on Cuba rejects this
slanderous act and demands that it be reversed immediately....

The Poor People’s March began May 11 in
Baltimore at the site of the police killing of Anthony Anderson, Sr., an
unarmed African-American, and arrived the next day in Freedom Plaza in
Washington, D.C....

The International Petition Campaign to Free Lynne Stewart and Save Her Life is gratified to report that today, May 13, following urgent communications from former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and social activist Dick Gregory, that Federal Bureau of Prisons General Counsel Kathleen Kenney telephoned Ramsey Clark to advise that a recommendation of Compassionate Release for Lynne Stewart from FMC Carswell Warden Jody R. Upton is on the desk of FBP Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. with a full package of documentation....

Washington, D.C. — The second day of the Poor People’s March
for Jobs and Justice, May 12, began with excitement as women from the National
Coalition of Leaders to Save Section 5 (of the Voting Rights Act), who drove
from Selma, Ala., took the lead of the march with other women on Mothers’
Day. It was Coretta Scott King who led the first poor people’s campaign
on Mothers’ Day 45 years ago.
A handful of marchers who had elected to walk through the night joined the
larger group to applause for their high spirits. Everyone marched the last
10-mile segment of the 41-mile trek from Baltimore to Washington, D.C...

Within hours of the start of the Poor People’s Campaign and March,
which headed from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., on May 11, words had turned
into action. Some hundreds of marchers defied Baltimore County cops who were
blocking the way at a Walmart Supercenter in Halethorpe, Md.

Most marchers wove their way past the police and made it to the doors of the
mammoth retailer, where they shouted, “Walmart, union! Walmart,
union!” and “Walmart, slave wages” as they blocked traffic in
the parking lot. The police, who physically abused Black women marchers, made
it clear they were there to protect Walmart’s “private
property.”...

hen the great African-American baseball player, Jackie Robinson, broke the
color barrier of the then all-white, segregated Major Baseball League on April
15, 1947, as a Brooklyn Dodger, it was a historic first. It was even more
remarkable because there wasn’t a modern-day Civil Rights Movement at
that time to support his efforts. In fact, it would take another seven years
before the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott was launched to challenge Jim Crow
racism in Alabama and throughout the South....

The May 2-3 and 4-5 nighttime bombings of
Syria’s International Airport, military installations in a Damascus
suburb and a military supply depot reportedly killed 300 people. The bombings
were initially denied but then confirmed by Israel and soon after given the
stamp of approval by the Obama Administration....

Saturday, May 11, 2013, community, civil rights, union
and student activists will reclaim the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s
legacy by staging a two-day march entitled, “2013 Poor Peoples Campaign & March,” from the city of Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Groups will plan a national strategy to fight new austerity measures along with major social issues including police brutality and mass incarceration. The demonstration will begin at 10 a.mn Baltimore at Biddle Street and North
Montford Avenue, the site where Anthony Anderson Sr. was killed by Baltimore
police on Sept. 21, 2012. Anderson’s death, ruled a homicide by city
medical examiners, is one of many cases of the growing epidemic of police
brutality across the country....

The Black is Back Coalition (BIBC) and a coalition of left and
progressive forces will demonstrate against the State's $2 million
'dead or alive' bounty on the life of Assata Shakur, a former political
prisoner who was granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984....

The latest Israeli warplane striking the outskirts of Damascus, Syria,
during the nights of May 2-3 and May 4-5 have dangerously escalated foreign
intervention in the ongoing war in Syria. The anti-war movement in the United
States must be alert to the growing attempt by the U.S., other NATO powers and
now the main militarist threat in the region, Israel, to overturn the Bashar
al-Assad government in Syria and replace it with an imperialist puppet....

Any real war on terror would start by hunting down those responsible for the
textile factory collapse outside Dhaka, Bangladesh. Start from the bottom, round up the subcontractors who place the job orders. Then the garment factories owners who ordered workers back into the Rana plant. They ignored the big crack in the wall. Then the building’s owner who swore it was safe....

Tens of thousands of workers marched through central Dhaka,
Bangladesh’s capital, on May Day to demand the death penalty for the
owner of the Rana Plaza building that collapsed April 24 killing more than 525
workers, most of them young women, and injuring 2,500 more who were found
trapped in the rubble. Hundreds of young workers are still unaccounted for and
believed dead under the factory’s ruins....

This week there have been enormous developments in the worldwide campaign to gain compassionate release for imprisoned people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart. The wheels are beginning to turn. We must redouble all efforts!...

On May 3, 2013, from 7pm-9pm, the first ever collection of writings by former
Black Panther and political prisoner Russell “Maroon” Shoatz
– entitled “Maroon the Implacable” -- will be officially
released at New York’s DiMenna Center....

A number of immigrant, labor and progressive organizations joined the May
1 Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights at an April 29 press
conference in front of the Manhattan office of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to
announce plans for May Day 2013 in New York. Immigrant rights groups expressed
their concern and disappointment with the “Gang of 8” proposal on
immigration reform. The eight refers to the number of senators —
Democrats (including Schumer) and Republicans — who are the main
architects of this divisive bill....

In Savar, an industrial suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, at
least 300 workers, mostly women, died at the Rana Plaza garment factory
building collapse on April 24. In addition to the appalling number of
deaths, more than 1,200 were injured there in the worst industrial
disaster ever to befall this country....

On April 24, in celebration of political prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal’s 59th birthday, hundreds of people from several
East Coast cities rallied outside the Center City office of Philadelphia
District Attorney Seth Williams to demand Abu-Jamal’s release....

An inspiring and electrifying meeting was held at the
Solidarity Center in New York City on April 25 featuring Mariela Castro
Espín, the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education
(CENESEX) in Havana, Cuba, and a deputy of the Cuban parliament, the National
Assembly of People’s Power. The meeting was sponsored by the
International Action Center. ...

What will happen to our Social Security benefits? This question is
being asked by the program’s 56 million recipients in response to the
Obama administration’s proposal to cut the annual cost-of-living raise
for all who receive these monthly checks, as part of his 2014 budget....

One million Colombians marched in the capital city of Bogotá as well as
other cities and towns on April 9 to show their support of peace negotiations
between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples
Army (FARC-EP). Talks which began in Oslo, Norway, in 2012 are now continuing
in Havana, Cuba....

The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology is a
corporation that does military research for the Israeli government. They design
drones that kill Palestinian children and design tractors that bulldoze
Palestinian families....

The International Action Center joins the Alliance for Global Justice, Witness for Peace-SW, National Lawyers Guild, Boston Bolivarians, National Network on Cuba, and all the organizations in the United States who are mobilizing to defend the Venezuelan election of President Nicolás Maduro and against U.S. interference in that country....

The International Action Center joins the Alliance for Global Justice, Witness for Peace-SW, National Lawyers Guild, Boston Bolivarians, National Network on Cuba, and all the organizations in the United States who are mobilizing to defend the Venezuelan election of President Nicolás Maduro and against U.S. interference in that country....

Fascist-like elements backed by U.S. imperialism are
attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. The Venezuelan
masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide are standing up and
saying “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that
country’s free and fair election April 14....

Right-wing elements backed by U.S.
imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela.
Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt
against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care
there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide
have stood up and said "no" to this coup, which follows the rightist
defeat in that country's free and fair election April 15....

Right-wing elements backed by U.S. imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide have stood up and said “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that country’s free and fair election April 15....

Much still remains unknown about the bomb explosions
yesterday at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and what was behind this
disaster that has tragically hit so many individuals and families who were on
the scene, the majority of them spectators....

Join young people, poor people, community and workers’ rights activists; occupy veterans and the families of police killing victims from across the region and the country that will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March for Freedom and Jobs led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by MARCHING 41 MILES FROM BALTIMORE, MD TO WASHINGTON, D.C., on Sat., May 11, 2013,
which is the 45th anniversary weekend of the Poor People’s March
Dr. King was to lead before he was assassinated....

When the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on same-sex marriage over two
days in late March, it signaled how far the fight for
lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer rights and liberation has come. Mass
consciousness has changed. An ever-increasing majority of people in this
country now support same-sex marriage. Regardless of how the high court rules
in June, this trend will continue. One day soon the marriage battle will be
won....

A military coup on March 24 in the capital city of Bangui changed the
government of the Central African Republic. Michel Djotodia is the leader of
the Seleka Coalition, which seized power and established a new government
largely composed of political figures who had been in opposition to the former
regime....

As the United States commemorates the 150th anniversary of the signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, a document
which officially ended slavery in those states and regions that rebelled
against the Union during the Civil War, one is also reminded of a not-so-noble
1863 event in New York City....

The
International Action Center reprints below an official statement from the Korean
People’s Army on the dangerous situation created by U.S. military moves
close to the boundaries of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
— north Korea....

The International Action Center, including its chapters around the country,
condemn in the strongest terms the heinous, brutal assassination of Georges
Henri Honorat, a prominent editor of Haïti Progrès and secretary
general of Haiti’s Popular National Party, on March 23. The 55-year-old
Honorat was shot twice in a drive-by assault in front of his home in the Delmas
section of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. ...

We will discuss the Peopleâ€™s Power Assembly Movement;
Worker Assemblies, Student & Youth Assemblies and the May 11th Baltimore to
Washington D.C. March to commemorate the 45th year since the 1968 Poor Peoples
Campaign and to ignite a new Poor Peopleâ€™s
Campaign....

Chicago — The Rahm Emanuel administration and the Chicago Public
Schools, along with politically connected corporate interests, are making a
calculated move to turn the clock back for Black and Latino/a students to the
bad old days of Jim Crow apartheid “separate but equal”
schools....

Achebe will be remembered for his literary contributions and his fierce
criticism of colonial and postcolonial African society. His books will remain a
mainstay of libraries and classrooms for many generations to come.
Nigeria today has still not overcome the legacy of imperialism. Despite its
vast oil wealth, there is profound inequality in the country....

President Barack Obama’s four-day visit to Israel, the first since his
first election in 2008, began March 20. Worldwide media attention was focused
on what the powerful U.S. leader would tell its client regime and settler
state. Overall, reports indicated worse news for the beleaguered Palestinian
people and for sovereign Syria....

Thousands of teachers, parents and community members rallied on March 27 in
the Chicago downtown area to protest Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close
54 public schools — in the predominately African-American and Latino/a
communities — to erase a $1 billion deficit. The rally began in
Chicago’s Daley Plaza and was followed by a march to City Hall that ended
at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters....

Baltimore has become the capital of police killings! Since January, 2012, 16
people have been killed by the Baltimore City Police Department and not a
single officer has been indicted. The epidemic of police terror and abuse are
not confined to our city. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has documented that
every 36 hours a Black person is killed by police agencies in this country.
Police repression and racism go hand in hand with the mass incarceration of
young people, mostly of color, who are locked away in prisons across this
country. We march to bring national attention to these issues and to demand
community control of police and an end to mass incarceration. On May 11, 2013
we will link arms with the families of the victims of police killings to demand
that the Justice Department charge killer police....

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland in 1820; her birth name was
Araminta Harriet Ross. As a child, she was beaten daily by those to whom she
was “hired out” to do domestic work. A field hand in her early teens, Tubman defied an overseer’s order to
restrain another field hand, and blocked a doorway so the man could escape.
When the overseer threw a two-pound weight at her, it broke her skull and left
her with lifetime seizures and narcolepsy. Around 1844, she married John
Tubman, a free Black man....

The shadow of war has hung over the Korean peninsula for six decades —
almost a lifetime. That is how long the Korean people have been waiting for a
peace treaty to be signed since the fighting ended in 1953....

French President François Hollande called for an end of the European
Union’s embargo on arms shipments to Syria just prior to an EU summit
meeting in Brussels on March 14. Britain also has taken this position. Both
countries are considering directly shipping weapons to the “rebels”
if the EU does not lift the embargo. (New York Times, March 15)...

The concept of equal rights for women has been around for more than 200
years, ever since Mary Wollstonecraft published her essay, “A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman,” in 1792. “Equal rights for men and
women” was included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed
by the United Nations in 1948....

In Michigan, only married couples, married individuals and single
individuals may adopt children. Same-sex couples are denied legal recognition
under one of the most restrictive anti-marriage laws in the country —
passed by the voters in 2004 — that has even been used to deny
union-negotiated health benefits to state workers’ same-sex partners.
Michiganians in same-sex relationships cannot jointly adopt children or adopt
the children of their partners....

The July 26th Coalition, a solidarity group that supports the Cuban revolution, hosted a March 13 evening of information and open dialogue with two representatives of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in New York City. The women were here participating in events held at the United Nations and hosted by the Commission on the Status of Women during International Working Women’s Month....

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has brought out the
malicious and carnal glee of the corporate press, who report breathlessly, not
only on his mortal passing, but an end to the Bolivarian Revolution.

They are the voices of their vampire, Wall Street bosses, who delight in
owning more of the earth, no matter how much misery they may cause for
millions....

Syria’s counterrevolutionary opposition has taken a step that moves it
even closer to U.S. imperialism. At the same time, the Barack Obama
administration has moved a step closer to direct and open intervention in the
war against Syria, using the pretext that “chemical weapons” have
been used....

The National Association of Letter Carriers has called for 100 rallies and
other protests on Sunday, March 24, 2013, to save postal jobs and to keep six-day delivery. The NALC call for a National Day of Action invites unions, small business customers, civic organizations and faith groups, as well as all postal workers, families, friends and neighbors, to gather outside specified post offices in the major cities of each state. “We want to make this fight about the
cost of losing Saturday mail delivery and how it would affect people in each
and every state,” NALC President Fredric Rolando said. The American Postal Workers Union, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union and the Rural Letter Carriers Union have all endorsed the March 24 rallies....

The corporate media in the U.S. play a powerful role in preparation for
imperialist war. They play an even more insidious role in rewriting the history
of U.S. wars and obstructing the purpose of U.S. wars.

A coalition of community-based
women's organizations that has organized events for the past eight years
have announced plans for women's events in Manhattan, Harlem, Brooklyn and
the Bronx to celebrate women's struggles. The events include a rally and
march on March 9th, starting at the site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire in Manhattan, and tributes to Harriet Tubman on March 10 at
Harlem’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in Brooklyn at Boys and
Girls High on Sat. March 16 and in the Bronx at the Bronx Art Space Gallery on
Sunday, March 24. All events are open to the media and are free. There will
also be a special tribute March 9 to the late President Hugo Chávez of
Venezuela -- the leader of the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution that promotes the
rights of women especially those of African and Indigenous
descent....

Using an obscure, impersonal term — “sequester” —
U.S. finance capital is trying to put over European-style, across-the-board
budget cuts at the federal level. Shielded by the fog of political gridlock,
the bankers and financiers are testing the waters to see how far they can
go....

He came from humble beginnings from among the teeming millions in Venezuelan
poverty and joined the army as much to make a living as to serve the people.
He and a group of mid-level military officers staged an unsuccessful coup
in February, 1992 against the corrupt regime of President Carlos Andrés
Pérez. Within eight years, the man that led the coup would be elected
president and Hugo Chávez would proclaim Venezuela as home of the
revolutionary liberator, Simón Bolívar, who fought and prevailed
against Spanish colonialists for Latin American independence early in the 19th
century....

Another status conference pertaining to the Central Park 5 civil lawsuit
against New York City and the New York Police Department was held on Feb. 19.
Supporters filled the large federal courtroom in downtown Manhattan to indicate
their justifiable outrage regarding the lack of progress in bringing closure to
this horrific, racist injustice....

The International Women’s Alliance calls on women all over the globe
to advance their ongoing struggles against imperialist globalization and the
crisis of capitalism by mobilizing with militant actions on March 8, 2013, to
commemorate International Working Women’s Day. The International Conference of Working Women over 100 years ago gave birth
to what is now popularly known as International Women’s Day. The origin
of this day was to highlight the resistance and organizing power of working
women to gain the right to fair wages and working hours, the right to vote and
an end to discrimination. Today, we must remember to hold true to the origins
of March 8 and return to the important issues that weigh heavily on women all
over the world: the crises of capitalism and imperialism....

In the almost two decades since the U.S. military first deployed them,
drones have generally escaped the spotlight, except in alternative media or
military-oriented trade publications. However, their use inside the U.S. has
opened a debate that has reached into the U.S. Congress.

Up until recently, these pilotless planes, which have brought death in the
night to villages on the other side of the world, attracted little attention
here in the mass media or government “oversight” bodies. Now, as
police agencies and private corporations line up to buy drones, civil liberties
and other organizations have demanded more information about how they will be
used....

A coalition of community-based women's organizations that has
organized events for the past eight years have announced plans for women's
events in Manhattan, Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx to celebrate women's
struggles. The events include a rally and march on March 9th, starting at the
site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, and tributes to
Harriet Tubman on March 10 at Harlemâ€™s African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, in Brooklyn at Boys and Girls High on Sat. March 16 and
in the Bronx at the Bronx Art Space Gallery on Sunday, March 24. All events are
open to the media and are free....

Nearly two years after the New York City Lesbian Gay
Bi Trans Community Center first barred the groups Siegebusters and Queers
Against Israeli Apartheid from meeting there, the lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer community erupted in outrage in mid-February, when the
Center again denied a space request from QAIA, as it had continually done for
the last two years....

Support of the legal and legitimate rights of the Iranian people for
self-determination and sovereignty is growing as the new round of
negotiations with Iran and the countries of 5+1, i.e. US, UK, France,
Russia, China plus Germany is set for February 26th in
Kazakhstan....

The new form of global warfare alleges to “protect” by
preemptively preventing mass atrocities. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-educated
academic and mother, is caught in its web and now serving 86 years in a federal
prison in Texas....

In support of efforts to pressure the U.S. government to repatriate Dr.
Aafia Siddiqui to Pakistan, former U.S. Congressperson Cynthia McKinney and
International Action Center Co-Director Sara Flounders traveled to Pakistan
last December...

Organizers with PIST — Parents to Improve
School Transportation — have begun talks with union and local activists
about a community response to the non-union student transportation crashes that
have occurred in the fourth week of the New York City public school bus
strike....

John Brennan found himself in an uncomfortable and unusual situation on Feb.
7 when protesters loudly confronted him, intent on holding him and the U.S.
government accountable for their past and present war crimes. Brennan is the
chief counterterrorism adviser to the Obama administration....

Pepe Palacios, a LGBTQ leader and activist from the
resistance movement in Honduras, spoke at an event hosted by the Venezuelan
Consulate here on Feb. 12. Palacios described the brutal government repression
in Honduras, as well as the courageous, unified resistance of the Honduran
people. The event was presented by the International Action Center and El
Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia — Partido Libre. Palacios is traveling
throughout the U.S. as part of a national tour organized by the Honduras
Solidarity Network....

You know Mumia. You know his words, you know his voice, you know his
struggle. And you know that his life's story has been obscured by the
controversy of his case, by the vindictive and fallacious narrative told about
him by media outlets, both mainstream and right-wing. This new documentary film
is here to recast that narrative, to tell the true story of Mumia from his
childhood, to the dawn of his political consciousness (as you know at a very
young age), to his early career as a journalist, to his incredible output of
books and commentaries from Death Row and beyond....

Alex Jones, the ultra-right-wing radio host, has made a name for himself in
recent weeks by rabidly denouncing proposed gun control legislation. He yelled
at CNN interviewer Piers Morgan, but in his tirade Jones stated many historical
inaccuracies....

Millions of workers across the United States received a rude and unpleasant
jolt this January when they discovered that their take-home pay had just shrunk
by 2 percent. The Social Security payroll tax cut of 2009 was restored, costing
workers an average amount of $850 a year, a significant wage decrease for
workers on the edge of financial ruin....

Minneapolis — Transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg declared
in court here on Feb. 4 that she/ze was “not guilty” on a charge of
third-degree gross misdemeanor (property damage) for spray-painting “Free
CeCe Now” on the walls and pillars of the courthouse/jail in
Minneapolis....

Pepe
is traveling throughout the US as part of a national tour organized by the
Honduras Solidarity Network. Please come to learn about the brutal repression
being carried out against the LGBT community in Honduras. But also learn about
the heroic resistance of the Honduran people who are organizing against the
illegal coup of 2009 and for a new society. Since 2009, over 80 mainly
transgender women and gay men have been killed in
Honduras....

La Coalición Primero de Mayo Por los Derechos de Los Trabajadores y Los
inmigrantes, invita a todas las organizaciones de la Ciudad de New
York, para discutir la planeación de la Marcha y Rally del
Primero de Mayo, celebrada desde el 2005. / The May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights invites everyone to the Citywide Meeting to discuss plans for the May 1st rally & march as well as for other events throughout the year. This event has been hosted by the Coalition annually since 2005 at Union Square
Park....

Now that President Obama has come out
in support of marriage equality, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has
dedicated a small budget to defend LGBT rights internationally, it’s the
perfect time to remind them that the abuse and killings of gay and transgender
people keep piling up in Honduras—even as Washington heralds the
country’s return to “democracy.”...

It was a special evening of solidarity with Venezuela on Jan. 31 in Detroit. With President Hugo Chávez ill and recovering from cancer surgery in Cuba, and the U.S. government working overtime with rightwing forces inside Venezuela to promote division and try to destabilize that country, Detroiters wanted to express their solidarity with Chávez, with the Bolivarian Revolution and with the masses of poor and working people in Venezuela....

There are facts, and then there is fiction. Let’s deal with the fiction first. In the fictional world reflected in Hollywood movies like the remake of “Red Dawn,” the socialist north of Korea launches a war against the United States, invading and killing many people. It would hardly be necessary to answer such a ridiculous fiction were it not for the fact that the corporate media are constantly coming up with alarming stories about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, picturing it as irrational, aggressive and ready to attack....

On Jan. 24, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon had lifted its ban on women serving in combat, and that more than 230,000 “battlefront” positions could be opened up to them. Military officials must submit plans by May on how to include women in combat, although they have until January 2016 to list male-only positions....

International Action Center co-director Sara Flounders was interviewed by RT News on Jan. 29 regarding the trials held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; U.S. secret prisons; and the use of torture by the U.S. Her comments also included the case of Aafia Siddiqui and other Muslim political prisoners. The six-minute video segment can be seen at tinyurl.com/atf88t8....

Philadelphia — United around the goal “Mumia, Free in 4!” — meaning his release in four years — dedicated activists from several U.S. cities, France and Germany gathered at Temple University on Jan. 26 for a conference organized by Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal....

As part of the decade-long NATO war and occupation in Iraq, led by the U.S., the imperialists conducted a campaign to promote foreign control by sowing and deepening religious and cultural divisions. The Iraqi people have paid a terrible price. More than a million lives have been lost, many from the shootings and bombings instigated by the NATO occupiers that continue to this day....

Of all the words I’ve penned over decades — as a revolutionary
journalist and editor; a writer/worker of leaflets, pamphlets and books; and a
proud member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981 — I’m
proudest of writing these three words: “Free CeCe Now!”

I spray-painted those words — the peoples’ verdict — on
the jailhouse/courthouse fortress walls and pillars at the end of a solidarity
“noise” demonstration for CeCe McDonald, in Minneapolis on June 4,
2012....

The 8,800 school bus drivers, matrons and mechanics of Amalgamated Transit
Union Local 1181-1061 have been on strike since January 16th, fighting the
anti-union Bloomberg administration's attempt to take away their job and
contract security. As the New York State AFL-CIO wrote, "For the first
time in 30 years, the mayor has removed a requirement that keeps the most
qualified, experienced, and skilled drivers on the job." He did not have
to do this and he can put it back legally!
...

According to UN investigations in 2010 there are more than 27,000 prisoners held by the U.S. in more than 100 secret prisons around the world and on 17 ships as floating prisons. These are almost entirely Muslim prisoners....

As a Cuba solidarity network, we lift our voices to tell Washington and the
Venezuelan elite: NO to destabilization efforts in Venezuela, which we fully
recognize is also aimed at Cuba's sovereignty. We say: "Hands off the
Bolivarian Revolution."...

French imperialism has launched major military operations in
West and East Africa under the guise of fighting “Islamic
terrorism.” French fighter jets and commandos have gone into operation in
the north and central regions of Mali....

The war that French imperialism has escalated in its former West African
colony of Mali has now spread to neighboring Algeria. There, some 82 people
have been reported killed after an attempted seizure of hostages at a natural
gas field. Imperialist governments are lining up for a long intervention in
Africa....

CeCe McDonald survived a white-supremacist, anti-woman, transphobic hate crime.
Today, she is in a cell where sadistic racist and anti-trans guards hold the
key. Now, the city of Minneapolis is re-charging Leslie Feinberg with
3rd-Degree Gross Misdemeanor for writing the peoples’ verdict “Free
CeCe!” on the jailhouse/courthouse walls on June 4, 2012.
...

The event at historic Riverside Church’s Assembly Hall the evening of Jan. 12 will long be remembered. Over 350 political, community and anti-war activists, along with U.N. diplomats and consular officials from Cuba, Venezuela, Peru, Iran and Serbia, celebrated both the 85th birthday of human-rights lawyer and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the 20th anniversary of the International Action Center, an anti-imperialist, anti-racist organization that Clark founded in 1992...

The only thing that surprised me when I heard that the Algerian kidnappers
had called for the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui was that it hadn’t
happened sooner. Don’t get me wrong, as a former hostage myself, there is no way I condone the actions of what has unfolded in a remote corner of the
Algerian desert. And my heart goes out to the families of those who have lost
loved ones in the unfolding drama at the In Amenas gas plant siege said to have
been masterminded by Mohktar Belmokhtar. The infamous one-eyed Algerian
militant apparently with ties to al Qaida, has claimed responsibility for
launching Wednesday’s attack. It also goes without saying there is no way the kidnappers, whether politically or criminally motivated, can be justified
in their actions....

In the U.S., the solidarity and progressive movement will organize National Days of Solidarity With Venezuela to send messages of good wishes to President Chavez and to let the people of Venezuela, especially the poor and working people who most benefit from the Bolivarian Revolution know that we will not allow the Obama administration to intervene in Venezuela....

New York — More than 8,000 school bus drivers who transport
152,000 pupils in this city every day, many of them children with special
needs, were forced to go on strike Jan. 16 to protect not only their jobs but
also the safety of the children they serve....

The Venezuelan people have demonstrated over and over their support and gratitude to President Chavez and clearly remain committed to the process of fundamental change in their country, no matter what. We are confident that the fundamental roots of the Bolivarian Revolution will remain strong and grow....

Two settlements were announced Jan. 7 in ongoing legal actions against the
major banks for abuses in placing millions of homes into foreclosure throughout
the U.S. But both only help banks, not homeowners....

French imperialism has launched major military operations in
West and East Africa under the guise of fighting “Islamic
terrorism.” French fighter jets and commandos have gone into operation in
the north and central regions of Mali....

The event at historic Riverside Church’s Assembly Hall the evening of
Jan. 12 will long be remembered. Over 350 political, community and anti-war
activists, along with U.N. diplomats and consular officials from Cuba,
Venezuela, Peru, Iran and Serbia, celebrated both the 85th birthday of
human-rights lawyer and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the 20th
anniversary of the International Action Center, an anti-imperialist,
anti-racist organization that Clark founded in 1992. The evening reflected a
broad leftist spectrum of respect and admiration for Clark and his principled
stances throughout his life. The gala event began with a delectable buffet of
mainly Latin American, South Asian and Middle Eastern hors d’oeuvres and
dishes prepared and donated by IAC staff and other activist volunteers....

Three years after the earthquake that killed 300,000 people on Jan. 12,
2010, reconstruction has barely begun in Haiti. Debris has been removed from
the streets in Port-au-Prince, Léogane and Pétionville, but at least
500,000 people are still living in tents — ripped, torn and tattered by
the storms and hurricanes that have hit this country in the last three
years....

On Dec. 31, outgoing North Carolina governor, Beverly Perdue, pardoned the
Wilmington 10 — the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, Connie Tindall, Marvin Patrick,
Wayne Moore, Reginald Epps, Jerry Jacobs, James McKoy, Willie Earl Vereen,
William Wright, Jr. and Ann Shepard — who had sentences ranging from 15
to 34 years following their convictions in 1972. Perdue was forced to publicly
admit that their sentences were “tainted by naked racism.” (CNN,
Jan. 1) A prolonged national and international struggle emerged in efforts to
free the nine African Americans and one white member of the 10....

Jan. 10 — The people of Venezuela poured into the streets by the
hundreds of thousands in the country’s four major cities today to defend
recently re-elected President Hugo Chávez and his government....

The unnamed victim — whom protesters dubbed Braveheart and Dimini
(“lightning” in Hindi) — clung to life for almost two weeks
after the torturous attack by six men on her and her male companion in a moving
city bus. Now the perpetrators, including the driver and a youth, face murder
charges and possible death sentences....

Since the International Action Center originated in 1992 out of two small
rooms in former Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s law office, this
organization has played a unique and vital role by combating the U.S.
imperialist offensive aimed at reconquering those parts of the world that had
won some independence and sovereignty between 1945 and 1991....

More than 1,000 people from throughout New York state converged on Albany
Jan. 9 to demand that Gov. Andrew Cuomo respond to the people and not the
natural gas corporations by immediately announcing a statewide ban against
hydraulic fracturing. The large energy companies in this state and their allies
in Albany would like to extract natural gas that is trapped in the widespread
rock formation known as Marcellus Shale through the process called hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking....

Charleston, S.C. — People from the West Coast and across the
country traveled to Charleston, S.C., to attend the ninth biannual Southern
Human Rights Organizers Conference (SHROC) on Dec. 7-9. The conference was held
in a hall belonging to Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen’s
Association, which represents thousands of dock workers on the East Coast....

On the day that the country was supposed to fall over the “fiscal
cliff,” Congress finally voted for a bill on taxes and other measures
that kept the government solvent for another two months. The Obama
administration claimed victory over the Republican right wing....

International Longshore and Warehouse Union locals in the Pacific Northwest
continue to work at terminals owned by the Grain Handlers Association after
three out of four terminal owners imposed the agri-bosses highly concessionary
“last, best and final” offer on Dec. 27. By nearly 94 percent, ILWU
members rejected that package, which the ILWU reports demanded “more than
750 changes to a contract that’s made the industry successful for the
past 80 years.”...

Just days before a potential strike by more than 14,500 workers at 14 ports
along the Eastern U.S. and the Gulf coasts, the International
Longshoremen’s union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) — the
port bosses — announced another temporary extension of their collective
bargaining agreement until Feb. 6 as negotiations continue. The previous
extension would have expired at midnight on Dec. 29....

It is fitting that we gather today. As icy winds whip against the walls of Riverside Church, we celebrate the work and life of Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center — Ramsey’s 85th year and the IAC’s 20....

It is a political creation – made by Congress itself, as a self- made
rule to force agreement (but really to blackmail political opponents), or else
massive cuts will be automatically made in defense, social services and other
government programs....

The first question asked after Ramsey Clark’s speech last weekend does
not have an easy answer. Clark, 84, a former Attorney General who served under
Lyndon Johnson, traveled to Nebraska on a humanitarian mission to visit Ed
Poindexter and Mondo We Langa (David Rice) at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.
The men, now 68 and 66 years old, have been incarcerated for forty-two years
for the 1970 bombing death of an Omaha police officer, a crime they insist they
did not commit....

The ominous signs of impending war with Syria escalate. NATO is massing
troops and military equipment on Syria's borders, and preparing to
install missiles aimed at Syria. U.S. warships are stationed off Syria’s
coast....

The passage of the union-busting “right-to-work” law in Michigan
is a severe legal setback for the labor movement and for the workers, the
oppressed and all the progressive masses in the state. If not turned around, it
will encourage right-wing, anti-labor forces across the country....

This year, possibly for the first time ever, the United Mine Workers did not
endorse a presidential candidate. In 2008, the union was an early endorser of
Obama, and has usually supported Democratic candidates. The union’s
decision to sit it out this year was an indication of the crisis that has
befallen coal miners, who don’t know where to turn for help....

An exciting Jan. 12 gala is being organized by supporters
of the International Action Center to honor and celebrate the
organization’s 20th anniversary, as well as the 85th birthday of IAC
founder Ramsey Clark. The event will be held at the historic Riverside Church
in New York City and will raise funds to support the important anti-racist,
anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist work of the IAC....

During the 1990's, in Venezuela and in Latin America in general, when the poor were getting poorer and everyone's standard of living was declining precipitously, when we felt that the lights were going out and that our reasons for happiness were evaporating, Hugo Chavez provided his radiant light, the light of the people, of the liberator Simon Bolivar....

Our lease is up on Jan 31! We have to relocate the fabulous Solidarity Center
from our home for the past 7 of our 20 years. We have a possible new office
almost in hand. But moving in New York City is very expensive, and security
deposits require months of advance rent. We need your help ...

While this is not and legally cannot be an ILA- union initiated mobilization, it is supported by ILA rank-and-file leaders in solidarity with the Bangladeshi workers who lost their lives last month in the tragic fire, exploited with slave wages by Walmart and other corporate retail giants....

In Colombia union organizers operate under the threat of violence, torture,
and even death. More union organizers are killed in Colombia than in any other
country in the world. Corporations like General Motors take advantage of the
anti-union climate....

The FBI recently confirmed what it has stated all along: Wade Michael Page
acted alone. Page, a white supremacist associated with neofascist groups, walked into a Sikh temaple on the morning of Aug. 5 in Oak Creek, Wis., 12 miles south of Milwaukee, and opened fire as the Indian worshippers, many with children in tow, were preparing for services....

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder
wasted no time signing anti-labor, so-called “right-to-work” laws
passed today, disregarding the daylong protest of more than 12,000 workers and
community constituents. “The workers united will never be defeated”
echoed in the Capitol rotunda, while outside mounted Michigan State Police
pepper-sprayed laborers, many of them unemployed, and other workers to disperse
them. The rushed lame-duck enactment sought to make it a fait
accompli, but instead it is a declaration of war on the entire U.S.
working class and labor unions. A banner reading “General Strike to beat
back ‘right-to-work’ ’’ attracted much interest, as did
thousands of leaflets headlined: “Beat back ‘right-to-work’
Yes, WE CAN!” The Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a one-day work stoppage
and march on Washington, D.C.
...

This year marks the 85th birthday of Ramsey Clark, the founder of the
International Action Center. And this year also marks the 20th anniversary of
the International Action Center I have had the privilege of both knowing and
collaborating with Ramsey for more than 40 years. Perhaps our most important
ongoing collaboration, together with Ben Bella (Algeria), Tony Benn (UK) and
Karmenu Bonnici (Malta), was being part of the coalition to oppose the Gulf War
and to demand an end to the criminal U.S.-led sanctions against the people of
Iraq — sanctions that eventually killed more than 1.5 million people and
marked only the beginning of the U.S. war against Iraq. At the end of this
month, Ramsey will be with us in Managua and will once again receive the love
and gratitude that our people have always felt for him. During my tenure as
President of the UN General Assembly, Ramsey was my key senior advisor on
international law, providing valuable insights into the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, the so-called “responsibility to protect”— new
jargon to mask the old practice of wars of aggression — and the sorely
needed reform of the United Nations....

Arriving in Karachi, Pakistan, at 4 a.m. for a trip in support of efforts to free and repatriate Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, former U.S. Congressperson Cynthia McKinney and International Action Center Co-Director Sara Flounders received an overwhelmingly warm welcome on Dec. 2. Hundreds of Siddiqui’s supporters met the two at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, carrying flowers, signs and banners, and chanting “Free Aafia!” and “Welcome!”...

Arriving in Karachi, Pakistan, at 4 a.m. for a trip in
support of efforts to free and repatriate Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, former U.S.
Congressperson Cynthia McKinney and International Action Center Co-Director
Sara Flounders received an overwhelmingly warm welcome on Dec. 2. Hundreds of
Siddiqui’s supporters met the two at the airport in the wee hours of the
morning, carrying flowers, signs and banners, and chanting “Free
Aafia!” and “Welcome!”...

Oakland, Calif. — “Picket line means don’t
cross,” chanted striking Service Employees Local 1021 workers and their
community supporters as they picketed all seven terminals at the Port of
Oakland on Nov. 20. The workers had walked out in an unfair-labor-practices
dispute with the port....

Please Join the International Action Center at Our 85th Birthday / 20th
Anniversary Gala Celebrating the 85th Birthday of Ramsey Clark:
& the 20th Anniversary of the IAC: JAN 12, RIVERSIDE CHURCH, NYC. Ramsey Clark remains a unique political figure in the United States. At great
sacrifice he has consistently opposed U.S. intervention abroad and fought for
justice at home. He has defended countless individuals and organizations,
targets of racism or repression, many who might have otherwise stood alone.
From prisoners on Texas death row, to the Attica prison rebels, to Native
American leader Leonard Peltier, to Jamil Al-Amin, the Plowshare defendants,
Lori Berenson in Peru, to prisoners in the Philippines, Turkey, ­Pakistan,
and Egypt — Ramsey Clark has been there for them. He has opposed nuclear
weapons, U.S. bases, drone wars and every U.S. aggression, including the most
recent dangerous threat of a new war on Iran....

In support of continuing efforts to pressure the U.S. government to
repatriate Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to Pakistan, former U.S. Congressperson Cynthia
McKinney and International Action Center Co-Director Sara Flounders will travel
to Pakistan from Dec. 2-9.

The trip will focus on due process and justice and expose U.S. practices of
secret renditions, illegal confinement and torture — practices
highlighted by Siddiqui’s case....

Within days of the start of Israel’s latest aerial offensive on the
imprisoned people of the Gaza Strip, solidarity protests with the Palestinian
people were held in over 300 cities worldwide. Demonstrations have continued
since the Nov. 21 cease-fire agreement....

A cease-fire agreement went into effect in battle-scarred Gaza on Nov. 21.
After a week of heavy bombing raids and missile attacks by the Israeli armed
forces that killed more than 160 Palestinians and wounded over 1,000, mainly
civilians, Israel and the elected Hamas government of Gaza agreed to end
hostilities. The government of Egypt, with the participation of U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, brokered the agreement....

Nov. 22 will mark 13,439 days of incarceration for Native political prisoner
Leonard Peltier. This year’s commemoration of the National Day of
Mourning, to be held in Plymouth, Mass., will once again honor Peltier, a
hero-in-the-struggle who has been unjustly imprisoned since 1976....

After superstorm Sandy we think “climate change.” It is back in
the headlines. But people in the Arctic have been noticing changes and coping
with them for many years. Now, sharp shifts in weather are occurring in the
Arctic, where ice and snow are an important part of life. These changes affect
transportation and food, making life much more difficult for Indigenous peoples
in the North....

Nov. 19 — Israel has launched another brutal military attack on the
Palestinian people living in Gaza, a small, densely populated strip of land
that houses 1.7 million people. Once again, Israel has the complete backing of
the U.S. government, which for decades has bankrolled the Zionist settler state
and its military, enabling their many assaults on the Arab and Muslim peoples
of the oil-rich region....

Under capitalism, especially here in the United States, so-called
“democracy” serves the wealthy. Whoever wins elections, the
Pentagon and weapons industry still get funding, imperialist wars and
occupations go on, the rich get tax breaks, while workers and the poor face
more layoffs, cutbacks and attacks....

For years, Pennsylvania families living near natural gas drilling activity
have relied on the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to
determine if hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was impacting their well water.
Little did they know that the DEP was systematically withholding information on
potential contamination by issuing incomplete test results....

On top of sanitation workers laboring 12-hour workdays and seven-day
workweeks, needed nonstop to clean up the city after Hurricane Sandy, one of
the workers’ biggest problems is the difficulty of obtaining fuel to get
to work. According to the president of the sanitation workers’ union,
Harry Nespoli: “They want to work but they have to have gas. People are
saying that they’re not going to give gas to Sanitation Workers.
That’s a total disgrace.” (thechiefleader.com, Nov. 9)...

The distribution site was buzzing with activity. Carloads and even a small
U-Haul truck of aid were contributed by many volunteers. The area was so heavy
with activity that Occupy Sandy organizers had to assign traffic coordinators
to make sure donations were not blocking traffic....

Harsh austerity measures have created an economic and social disaster that
affects tens of millions across Europe. Greece, Portugal and Spain are
particularly hard-hit. A coalition of New York Greek-Americans, groups in
solidarity with Greece and working people across Europe have called for a rally
at the United Nations Missions of Greece and the European Union on Wednesday,
November 14, 2012....

All activists fighting for real change need time, space and
discussion to grapple with the still unfolding crisis, total disarray and
infrastructure breakdown that has followed Hurricane Sandy. We need to prepare
for the corporate onslaught of the 'fiscal cliff' and evaluate months
of election saturation that dealt with none of the real issues facing the
planet....

They are often unseen and unrecognized by the television
cameras in the coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane
Sandy. However, unlike the politicians, bureaucrats and agency
officials — who give press conferences and gloat about all
they’re doing to fix the crisis — it is working people,
community members and other progressive activists who are doing the real hard
work of cleaning up the damage that was left in the storm’s wake.

Union members from at least 13 major labor unions have formed a strong core
of the workforce doing the crucial repairs. They are doing everything from
fixing subway lines to patching up homes, and providing and distributing
basic necessities. Many of these workers were hit hard by the storm
themselves....

Nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy struck, as cold weather sets in and a new nor’easter storm threatens on Nov. 7, over a million households remain without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Some New Jersey communities are also without natural gas as a result of storm damage and may remain so for six to eight months....

The disaster known as Hurricane Sandy should have come as no surprise. Every possible warning sign had preceded it.

For years, international conferences had been held at which scientists laid out the effects of global warming on the climate. What were once considered extraordinary weather events — torrential rains, severe droughts, more frequent and intense tornadoes and hurricanes — had become the new norm....

The storm that hit the U.S. East Coast Oct. 29 exposed the harm done by
capitalist priorities in the crucial areas of essential health care and
electric power for millions. Some 400 available industrial-scale generators sat unused while four major New York City hospitals located in flood zones and two New Jersey hospitals were forced to evacuate on an emergency basis. In the hospitals both the main energy source and emergency backup generators failed, providing the clearest possible example of bone- deep hospital and infrastructure maintenance cuts. Meanwhile, high-rise apartment houses and entire neighborhoods went for days without electric power. That meant days without drinking water, flush toilets, heat or functioning elevators. This creates life-threatening conditions, especially for seniors, the disabled and infants....

The material aid gathered will be delivered to hard hit communities in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, Jersey City, Queens and elsewhere in coordination with groups who heroically came to the forefront and provided assistance such as CAAAV, Occupy Sandy, Peoples Power Movement, Anakbayan and others. These groups came together faster than FEMA or the Red Cross, organizations who have billions of the people's money but who are stymied by bureaucracy and a lack of genuine concern for the people....

Following this join the Peoples Power Assembly in a “people to
people” relief effort. We will distribute water, do free blood pressure
screenings at the nearby Chelsea community and help in food distribution....

“I am the proud father of Alan Blueford, murdered by the
Oakland police,” stated Adam Blueford. His spouse, Jera­lynn
Blueford, added, “Alan’s murder was arbitrary, unnecessary and
racist. It’s sad to say but he was shot down because of the color
of his skin. They profiled him by saying he looked suspicious.”...

After ravaging much of the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy has hit the United
States. As of this writing, more than 8 million people here are without power,
38 are reported dead and still counting, and the damage is reckoned at many
tens of billions of dollars. No numbers have been put on personal losses of the
masses of people in terms of their homes, cars, household possessions, let
alone irreplaceable personal items of precious, sentimental value....

Supporters of Bani Walid’s people demonstrated outside the General National Congress parliament in Tripoli, Libya, on Oct. 21 calling for a halt to the town’s siege. Bani Walid’s 80,000 people were a bastion of support for the former Jamahiriya government led by the martyred Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Protesters attempted to enter the building but were dispersed by police....

During the last 19 months of chaotic civil war in
Syria, with opposition rebels armed by the U.S., NATO and the Gulf monarchies
through Turkey, have you ever heard Syrian government representatives defend
their government’s position regarding the fighting in their country? If you live in the imperialist U.S. or Europe, your answer is probably
“never.” Why? Syrian television stations are banned by sanctions,
and corporate-owned television hardly ever offers the “enemy” sound bites. Even in other Arabic-speaking countries, the Syrian position has been drowned out by the anti-Syrian propaganda from Qatar and Saudi Arabia....

So now we finally know part of the terrible truth. Will the Human Right Council finally wake up and start to investigate the thousands upon thousands of war crimes, committed by the Anglo-American occupation forces and their local Iraqi stooges? Will the ICC finally do what it is created for: persecute war criminals? Investigate the US genocide in Iraq? Please? After more than one million deaths, and millions of refugees?...

Turkey’s war jets forced down a civilian airliner flying from Moscow
to Damascus. Thirty-five Russians and Syrians were passengers on the Oct. 10
flight, endangered by the action. U.S. spokesperson Victoria Nuland immediately
supported Turkey’s act of air piracy. Also, some 150 U.S. special troops
moved into Syria’s southern neighbor, Jordan....

As famine lurks throughout Haiti and cholera
daily kills the weak, the very young and the old, the response of the Haitian
people has been growing militancy. In massive numbers they have taken to the
streets to demand an end to the corrupt regime of President Michel
Martelly....

One year since the brutal assassination of former Libyan leader Col. Moammar
Gadhafi, the Republican Party is using Libya’s political crisis in an
attempt to defeat President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election. Both U.S.
ruling-class parties backed the 2011 war against this oil-producing nation that
had maintained the highest standard of living in Africa....

On Oct. 15, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority announced the
fourth round of fare hikes in four years. During that time the MTA has also
been on a cutback frenzy. Dozens of station booths have been demolished. The
transit agency has made it harder for people with disabilities to qualify for
Access-A-Ride....

The horrible, near-fatal shooting of a young Pakistani schoolgirl,
reportedly by members of the Taliban, has focused world attention on the
conflict between the armed Islamic group and Pakistani advocates of education
for women. Malala Yousafzai, 14 years old, was shot in the head and neck while
on a school bus, according to her classmates. She has been flown to Britain to
receive medical attention for severe damage to her skull....

If genetically modified (GM) foods and genetically engineered (GE) agricultural products are as “safe” as manufacturers Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences claim, why go to such great lengths to block efforts to label them?...

For over a year and a half we've been hearing about what's going on in the Middle East, and the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Yet with all the proclamations of ‘free press’ we seldom hear the voices of those most affected by war and terrorism....

On Thursday, at 3:00 PM in front of the MTA headquarters, anti-war activists, Muslim clergy and others will hold a press conference to announce legal action to prevent the MTA from blocking ads countering war, hate and racism.
...

Faced with the risk that the escalating tension between Syria and Turkey
will lead to an open NATO attack on Syria, either directly or through the
Turkish army, the Platform Against Imperialist War CALLS UPON THE POPULATION TO
REACT WITH DETERMINATION TO OPPOSE THIS NEW AGGRESSION FROM THE IMPERIALIST
POWERS OF THE U.S., THE EU AND ISRAEL....

New York — The capitalist media waged a frenzied war campaign against
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejahd while the United Nations was in
session the end of September. This propaganda campaign was designed to create
popular support for “regime change” in Iran so that Wall Street can
take over that country’s oil resources....

The autopsy report released Oct. 2 officially ruled
Anthony Anderson’s death a homicide. The report showed he died from a
ruptured spleen, severe blunt trauma injuries, six to 10 broken ribs and other
injuries. The Baltimore People’s Assembly – including
Anderson’s family – is calling for the jailing of killer
cops....

A step forward toward building people’s power was taken in
Philadelphia when activists met on Sept. 26 in the western part of the city.
The People’s Power Assembly had been preceded by a series of speakouts
during the summer where community residents addressed the issues that concerned
them....

While staying aware of its destructive capacity, we can expand our view if
we also examine its weaknesses. The Pentagon’s Achilles’ heel lies
within the contradictions of the capitalist system that created this
monstrosity....

Sara Flounders has been active in progressive and anti-war organizing since
the 1960s. She is co-director of the International Action Center and
co-authored and/or edited 10 books the IAC published on U.S. wars and sanctions
against Iraq and Yugoslavia, on U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons, on Haiti
and Colombia, and on opposing military recruiters. She writes regularly for the
Marxist Workers World newspaper, and speaks on U.S. imperialist aggression on
alternative and corporate media outlets. She helped coordinate major
International War Crimes Tribunals to document the U.S. planned destruction of
Iraq and Yugoslavia and a Tribunal on earlier U.S. crimes in Korea....

NATO-member Turkey has used alleged mortar fire from Syria as a pretext to
launch artillery fire across the border, killing Syrian soldiers, and to
prepare military intervention. NATO -- an alliance mainly of the former
colonial overlords of the world and the current biggest imperialist powers --
immediately supported Turkey's aggression. The British and German
governments, the European Union and the U.S. all criticized the Syrian
government and sympathized with Turkey. The Turkish Parliament has approved
further attacks....

The International Action Center plans to submit an ad opposed to racism,
anti-Muslim bigotry and war to the MTA on Friday morning, Sept. 28. The IAC ads
are in response to the racist ads posted in NYC subway stations — placed
by Pam Geller from Stop Islamization of America and American Freedom Defense
Initiative. Geller's ads refer to Muslim community members as being
"savages" among other offensive language....

Racism is a weapon of war. We stand in solidarity with
victims of police, state, and racial violence and build links to people under
attack – Muslims, Sikhs, immigrant workers, death row prisoners,
­African-American and Latino youth, social justice ­activists are all
targets in an atmosphere of escalating racism and
repression....

The International Action Center has contracted with MTA to run 10 ads opposed to racism, anti-Muslim bigotry and war. The IAC ads will be in NYC subway stations in one week, starting Monday, Oct 8. They are in response to the racist ads posted in NYC subway stations — placed by Pam Geller from Stop Islamization of America and American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller's ads refer to Muslim community members as being "savages" among other offensive language.
Two years ago around the 9-11 date Pamela Geller, in a well-funded media campaign, tried to whip up in NYC the same climate of bigotry and intolerance against Muslims with an ugly campaign against the building of an Islamic Center blocks from the World Trade Center. The International Action Center with a broad coalition of forces challenged this campaign to demonize Muslims. Many thousands of people responded with mass rallies and meetings. A strong, united public challenge to the racist, bigoted forces helped to turn the ugly climate around. It is essential that all those outraged by the racist, pro-violent message be able to see a different message. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) publicly stated that in order to protect freedom of speech, they must accept extreme right-wing racist Geller's $6,000 for 10 ads in the largest mass transit system in the western hemisphere with 8.5 million daily riders. The IAC is an all volunteer organization without funding,a except many small individual donations. It has advanced the funds to undertake this campaign because we felt it was important to counter the 'hate messaging' of Geller. But we hope many people will step forward to help carry the costs....

There are times in history when war and politics converge with economics to
create a true turning point, a point at which things cannot and will not ever
be the same. Such points in time are marked by fierce struggle....

During the period of September 18 to October 1, 2012, heads of states and
high-level officials from the world over will be gathering in New York to
address the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly.
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum sees this as an ideal time for all peace-loving
people to send a clear message to the UN and the world and demand:
...

The International Action Center joins the call by the United National Antiwar Coalition for demonstrations, meetings, vigils or other actions for the weekend of Oct. 5-7, along with protests internationally in 3 cities in Canada - Vancouver, Toronto, Windsor and protests in London, Tehran, Iran and Islamabad, Pakistan to mark the 11th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan....

Following on what organizers describe as a hugely
successful community gathering of over 2000 people at Riverside Church, a
coalition of sponsoring groups is calling for a meeting with Gov. Andrew Cuomo
at his New York office on September 26 to discuss shutting down the notorious
Attica Correctional Facility....

The massive, angry demonstrations and attacks on U.S. embassies sweeping
through the Muslim world comes in the context of a campaign against Muslims
carried out by the U.S. government in an attempt to justify their wars against
Muslim countries. This campaign includes preemptive prosecutions where FBI
agents create phony plots and encourage behavior that can be prosecuted and
attacks on civil liberties at home; the Peter King hearings; NYPD spying on
Muslims; raids and detentions; and states that have passed anti-Muslim laws. It
includes the physical attacks on Muslims, on mosques and on people who racist
whites think are Muslims, like Sikhs, and oppos